Daredevil S2:E5 Kinbaku

Simple Synopsis

The return of an old lover spins Matt’s life around.

With Elektra’s appearance, Matt remembers the first time he met her, when he and Foggy crashed a fancy party ten years ago while they were in law school. The lawyer-to-be and the rich debutante size each other up and are intrigued, leading to a relationship that starts with Elektra stealing a car to take Matt on a joyride.

In the present, Matt is not remotely happy to see his ex-lover, and demands to know why she’s back and in his apartment. She tells him that she wants to retain his services as a lawyer to help her get her deceased father’s funds back out of investments made into the criminal Roxxon corporation. Matt refuses and asks her to leave.

At the office the next morning, Karen insists that there is more to the story around Frank Castle, and is concerned everyone is only painting him as a psychopath. Matt and Foggy try to convince her to let it drop so things can get back to normal before Reyes buries the firm, and Foggy is especially concerned by their financial problems as they approach bankruptcy. A sudden massive payment from the bank sends Matt chasing off after Elektra, while Karen decides to follow up with the Bulletin.

Matt listens in on Elektra’s meeting with Roxxon and catches her disrupting their computer systems, ending the meeting early as they usher her out to deal with the threat. She notices him watching the meeting from across the street, but makes no move to expose him.

Karen convinces Ellison, the Bulletin editor, to let her pour through their back issues looking for clues on the Castle story, and after hours of searching they are able to put together that Castle’s family was killed at the carousel, caught in a massive drug deal gone wrong between the Cartel, the Dogs of Hell, and the Kitchen Irish. She then rushes off for her date with Matt.

The date goes poorly at first, very awkward, and not at all helped by Elektra calling in the middle to try to convince Matt to leave and join her. He remembers the moment in their relationship when she learned about his abilities and his fighting skills, getting to know him better than anyone else at the time. She tells Matt he’s fired and to keep the money, and he continues his date with Karen in a more casual setting. They end up having a perfect night, but after leaving Karen Matt goes to see Elektra.

Matt’s thoughts go back to the end of their relationship, when they broke into a mansion to play house. Elektra had sought out and found the man that had killed Matt’s father, and tried to convince Matt to kill him. Finally realizing that Elektra was completely crazy, Matt refused to kill the man and the relationship was over. In the present he goes to see her to ask why she would do such a thing, and she tells him that she knows him better than he even knows himself. Matt hears gunshots from the first floor of the building and she tells him that the Yakuza are after her for her actions at the meeting, and that she had manipulated him to be there to help her fight them off. Worse, she presents him with the Daredevil suit, stolen from his apartment, letting him know that she knows what he’s been doing.

TL;DR
Ex-lover Elektra returns, setting Matt on edge, even as his relationship with Karen advances. We see flashbacks of how his relationship with Elektra started, quickly turned destructive, and ultimately ended with her trying to have him kill his father’s murderer. While Karen tries to get more information on the Punisher, Matt tries to guess Elektra’s new game, and gets drawn into a fight with the Yakuza.