Everyone Matt Murdock has more chemistry with than his Daredevil: Born Again girlfriend, ranked

Matt Murdock has many problems in Daredevil: Born Again — and a complete lack of chemistry with his canon girlfriend is absolutely up there.

When I first started the show, I was tentatively interested in Heather Glenn, who meets Matt during a blind date set up by Matt’s current law partner. They had some cute moments in the first episode, but soon it turned out that Heather had no personality of her own outside of helping Mayor Fisk and his wife with their relationship, the serial killer Muse, or Matt. All we ever saw of their relationship is generic couple stuff that then morphed into even more generic bickering. 

I feel betrayed by that first episode, wherein he literally sweeps Heather off her feet to pull her to safety as a crowd rushes in. Where did that energy go?

It’s a shame, because Matt Murdock is so damn charming! He has easy banter with almost everyone. There are a lot of people in the show that he interacts with that have more sizzle and pop than Heather — as well as more defined personalities and character arcs. In fact, there are so many that I just had to rank them. 

Honorable mention: My MCU-sona

I’m just saying if you’re trawling through AO3 and you spot an OC x Matt Murdock fic, where the OC in question is an intrepid reporter with a vaguely Eastern European name and long dark hair living in NYC… well, you know who wrote it. 

9. Jennifer Walters

Jen isn’t even in this show. But within one brief dalliance, she and Matt have oodles more chemistry than Matt and Heather do throughout the entire first season of Daredevil: Born Again. Alas, they are split apart by time (who knows when the heck She-Hulk took place in relation to this show) and genre (quirky legal comedy versus gritty crime drama), so their connection is probably not meant to be. Still, we can dream…

8. Karen Page

As someone who didn’t watch the original Netflix Daredevil series, I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here, except that there is something. Not sure if it’s a missed connection that never panned out, but at the very least it’s a deep friendship that splintered after a tragedy. That’s already way more compelling than a forced blind date, and it’s got the chemistry to match. 

7. Kirsten McDuffie

Matt’s current law partner is always trying to get him to just take the business side of their practice seriously! It’s a perfect realist-versus-idealist dynamic, tossed in with some delicious co-worker tension. Like a Mulder-and-Scully duo if they were lawyers instead. I don’t know why Kirsten bothered to set Matt up with Heather when she was right there! Maybe she doesn’t see him that way. I get it. I’d also be vaguely annoyed if my law firm partner kept taking on increasingly risky pro bono cases at the expense of getting us a business loan. 

6. Kamala Khan’s father

Listen. I know that Yusuf Khan is happily married. I support his marriage. I love how cute he is with his wife and I love what a supportive dad he is. But… when he and Matt teamed up to go down to the safe… that immediate trust and rapport between them… maybe Matt was Yusuf’s bisexual awakening. I like to think he was. 

5. Devlin

The Irish bank robber just oozed charm. The two of them together sparked like fireworks. Especially all the conversations about Matt’s own Irish heritage! And c’mon, his name (or alias) is literally Devlin — that’s some beautiful parallels right there. I also like that he calls Matt “Solicitor.” There’s something very sexy about an impersonal nickname in an enemies-to-lovers ship! The only reason he doesn’t get a higher ranking is because we don’t know enough about his backstory (that’s also incidentally exactly why he ended up this high; a blank slate to project on!). 

4. Sonija, the Latvian court clerk

And speaking of blank slates! Matt interacts with Sonija for all of two minutes, but it’s a fiery and flirty back-and-forth in which they spar with legal jargon and Matt smells the honey cake on her lips. Uh, hello? He passes it off as a regular extrasensory thing, but it’s also shockingly intimate and makes me wonder if he’s going around sniffing everyone or if Sonija is special. They’ve clearly got some history even if she’s a one-episode character. Sonija also mentions she’s looking for “Mr. Right” and absolutely checks him out as he leaves the room. This interaction was just a tiny part of the show, but I’ve been thinking about it. 

3. Kingpin’s wife, Vanessa

Matt doesn’t interact much with Vanessa Fisk, but phew, that charged dance scene in the penultimate episode was