Please note: This post contains spoilers for both the fourth episode of Daredevil‘s second season and the 2014 film John Wick. If you have not seen the fourth episode of Daredevil‘s second season and the 2014 film John Wick and do not want to stumble across relatively important plot points from both, this would be a good place to stop reading. Also, why haven’t you seen John Wick yet? For the love of God.
There are, really, two lessons one should take away from the movie John Wick: The first lesson is that you don’t need much in the way of an actual plot if the majority of your movie is Keanu Reeves hauling ass around a city in a cool car and systematically killing every member of the Russian mob. You can have a plot, sure. Throw in something about a hotel for assassins if you like. But you do not need much more than that. The movie will still probably own, and own hard.
The second lesson, which is both much more valuable in your every day life and much more applicable to our current discussion, is that you should never mess with an assassin’s dog. Not even a little. That’s what got all those Russians killed in John Wick — their poor decision to kill his puppy. You’d think criminals of the world would have taken note.
Which brings us to episode four of Daredevil‘s recently released second season. In an attempt to smoke out The Punisher and make him pay for both killing members of their gang and stealing money from them, the Irish mob breaks into his house and steals his dog. Their plan works (kind of, or so it seems), because they are able to surround him and bring him in to try to get answers and/or revenge.
Unfortunately for them, The Punisher won’t talk no matter how much physical harm they inflict upon him, so they move to Plan B…
… which is bad because now The Punisher is super pissed off, something they would have known going in had they seen the movie John Wick and taken away the two lessons listed above.
As far as I can tell, there are three possibilities that explain this foolhardy plan of action.
Possibility #1: No one in the Irish mob has seen John Wick, or maybe one low-level member has — probably named, like, Chad — and no one wants to listen to him.
IRISH MOB GUY: Oy, so woy’re all in agreement then, yah? We take the bastard’s dog.
CHAD [meekly]: Ommm, fellas. I donno if that’s a grite idea. I was watching this movie with Kay-anu Rives and they took h-…
IRISH MOB GUY: Oy, Chad. Enough. We’ve all seen The Replicements. Not the time. Dog plan’s a go.
CHAD [meekly]: But-…
IRISH MOB GUY: Oy! Chad! I said “enough”!
Possibility #2: Everyone in the Irish mob only watched John Wick up to the dog-killing part and then they were all, “Yeah yeah yeah, I got it. Guy screwed around and got his dog killed and now he’s sad. Let’s watch Ride Along again,” and they never got to the bloody revenge part.
A classic mistake.
Possibility #3: John Wick does not exist in the Daredevil universe.
This might explain why everyone in Hell’s Kitchen is so on edge in Daredevil.
Anyway, the analogy here isn’t perfect because The Punisher wanted them dead for killing his family long before they stole his dog, and getting captured and tortured was all part of his master plan, but the straight line is still there to be drawn through the middle of all of that: The Irish mob messed around with a trained killer’s beloved dog, and then they all got theirs heads blown off.
The Law of Wick holds true yet again.