10 best moments of Daredevil season 3

Marvel’s Daredevil season 3 production still. Photo: David Lee/Netflix

Matt Murdock Meets His Mother

Anyone familiar with the comics knows it’s Matt Murdock’s relationship with his father that shaped the young man’s view of the world. He fights crime, he endures bloody beatings, and he lives by a code because that’s what his father did. This idea of fathers and sons and legacies permeates every nook of Daredevil’s story, but the show introduced another parental figure this season by letting us in on a little secret: Matt Murdock has a mom.

Well, of course he has a mom, but we actually meet her this season, and Matt does too. It turns out that the same woman nursing him back to health in the first few episodes, the nun who took care of him as a boy at the orphanage, Sister Maggie, is actually Matt’s biological mom. It’s an eyebrow-raising secret revealed in the most unexpected of ways.

And because the show knows it can’t just introduce game-changing story lines for the shock and awe of it all, we’re given a bit of Sister Maggie’s backstory, including her romance with Matt’s father, the postpartum depression that led to her rejoining the church, and her guilt at keeping this secret from her son for so many years.

Joanne Whalley plays Sister Maggie and her scenes with Cox are some of the best of the entire series. Watching the two bounce off one another, with Whalley doling out the kind of no-nonsense, sharp-tongued advice you’d expect from a woman who’s probably seen it all in her profession, is the definition of entertainment. And the show uses this big reveal to push Matt to examine his relationships and start treating his own chosen family better. It’s a win-win for everyone.