Relationship Spotlight: Frank Castle & Karen Page (The Defenders)

In Daredevil’s second season, one of its best assets was the addition of the Punisher.  Frank is an intriguing character in his own right and, as a vigilante with a dark side, he provides a neat foil for Matt, but I think he’s at his most interesting when paired with Karen.  Their interactions make up some of the season’s best scenes for both characters, a dynamic that’s carried over into The Punisher (some Frank-Karen-related spoilers.)

Karen first encounters Frank in the midst of a lot of personal upheaval and professional uncertainty.  She’s already been trying to figure out how she feels about the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, and now here comes another vigilante who takes matters much farther and darker than the Devil ever has, brutally murdering drug dealers and gang leaders with ruthless efficiency.  Her desire to make this clear-cut is thwarted.  Murder is wrong, so these murders ought to be wrong, but the more she digs into the Punisher and his tragic history, the more complicated that gets.  He’s been wronged, devastatingly so, and that broke him.  The slaughter he now carries out is, in his mind, equal parts justice and vengeance, and yet the trauma he’s endured doesn’t erase what he’s doing; Karen can’t quite come to a conclusion about that.

It’s further complicated by Karen’s own confusion about herself.  Extreme circumstances in the previous season led her to kill a man, and her feelings of anguish and guilt over that manifest in part through her obsession with the Punisher.  As those around her condemn him as nothing but a murderer, she wonders if she’s really so different.  As she follows the stories of how he only kills the guilty, she wonders how he would judge her.  Everything she feels about the Punisher is tied up in how she feels about herself, and as she becomes increasingly invested in what becomes of him, his chance of salvation becomes hers in a way.

These personal issues draw Karen to the Punisher and his story, and professional entanglements actually bring them together.  When Nelson and Murdock represents Frank in his trial, Karen is instrumental in building his case.  Her obsession fuels her research and evidence-gathering, and it also drives her to take on new roles within the firm (Foggy, recognizing her talents, suggests she become a lawyer herself.)  Frank sees how deep she is into this, and he insists on her conducting his pre-trial interviews.  And while Karen’s interest in journalism begins in season 1, it grows tremendously here, ultimately leading to a career change.  Again, it’s the Punisher and his story that spurs this on:  Karen’s need to know what happened to him, why he does what he does, and how she feels about it.

I’m still in progress on season 1 of The Punisher, but so far, I’m enjoying Karen’s presence in Frank’s story there as well.  With old ghosts haunting him, a man who’s supposed to be dead has allies in short supply, and Karen is one of the few people he can turn to.  He looks to her for information, which she somewhat warily provides.  After everything that went down between them on Daredevil (not to mention Karen’s experiences on The Defenders,) she’s trying to do what she can to help while still maintaining the boundaries she needs.  She’s gone pretty far down the rabbit hole with him, and she needs to know she can keep from getting sucked in.

Favorite Characters: Karen Page (Daredevil)

It took me a while to appreciate Karen, and I really don’t think it should have.  I feel like I initially had a tendency with her character to take a few details about her and fill in a type, when in truth, there’s more to her than that, and as I’ve come to understand that, it’s greatly increased my enjoyment of her as a character (Karen-related spoilers.)

I don’t know why, in Daredevil’s pilot, the first impression I made of Karen was “damsel.”  It’s true that we meet her shaking and terrified, and that Nelson and Murdock saves her legally (from a crime she was framed for with evidence so damning no other defense attorneys would touch her) while Daredevil saves her physically (from a hired goon sent to her apartment to kill her,) and that she’s thin, blond, and softspoken.  However, it’s also very true that the only reason she’s framed for murder – way more than enough to throw anyone off their usual game – is because she uncovered proof of her company’s wrongdoing and the only reason she’s even at her apartment when she gets attacked is because she’s retrieving the flashdrive of evidence against the company.  If she needs saving, it’s because her enemies are so much powerful than she is but she still takes them on anyway.

For me, Karen’s most defining traits are her determined pursuit of the truth and her tireless work ethic for obtaining it.  These qualities serve her well working at Nelson and Murdock fighting on behalf of their clients to uncover the corruptions in the system that have let them down.  In season 2, she makes an intriguing shift from dogged legal assistant to investigative journalist.  It all starts with the Punisher:  first looking for information simply about who he is, then the trauma that shaped him into who he’s become, then evidence that can be used in his favor for his legal defense, and finally, proof that someone else is setting him up to answer for their crimes.  She finds enormous, hidden truths and risks her safety on countless occasions in tremendous ways, all in her quest to understand this person and what is going on around him.  In her investigation, she proves supremely competent, with a fine head for conjecture and seeing which threads are the right ones to pull on.  Foggy sees how skilled she is and asks if she’s ever considered law school herself.

I also like the interesting evolution of Karen’s moral considerations.  Despite the way Matt views her, consciously or otherwise, as a Good Girl (especially compared to Elektra,) Karen is no stranger to darkness.  She gives the first impression of being someone Hell’s Kitchen will eat for breakfast, but she knows how to make hard choices and has gotten her hands very dirty to protect her and her own.  That’s left her questioning who she is, what’s right, and what’s wrong.  While Matt wrestles with similar issues (as does the show altogether,) he actively trained and prepared for the dark path he’s gone down, whereas Karen has just sort of found herself on it and is trying to reevaluate what she’s capable of and where her lines are.  It leads to the great interactions between her and the Punisher.  On one level, she sees how he does terrible things (murdering gangsters) for what he feels is a just cause (avenging his family and preventing them from hurting anyone else,) and she wonders if her own dark actions can be justified.  On another, she sees how the man who only kills “bad people” spares her, and she wonders if she deserves it.  Neat stuff to explore here.