‘Daredevil’ Season 3: How “Dex” Became Bullseye

In Season 3 of Marvel’s Daredevil, Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) finally meets his match. The show introduces a troubled FBI agent named Benjamin Poindexter (Wilson Bethel) who is hopelessly lost while Matt has faith, is alone while Matt has friends, and can unleash hell from a distance while Matt excels at fighting up close. Benjamin Poindexter is, whether he calls himself this or not, Bullseye.

For those of you not familiar with the world of comics, Bullseye is often considered the “Daredevil’s Joker.” Once an over-the-top joke of a villain, he evolved into Daredevil’s most terrifying opponent. The ill-fated Daredevil movie starring Ben Affleck cast Colin Farrell as Bullseye, and fans have been clamoring for the Netflix series to take on the character for years. But this latest version of Bullseye that we see on screen — one who was a heroic FBI agent until the Kingpin, Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), unravels him — is brand new.
Decider asked Daredevil Season 3 showrunner Erik Oleson about the decision to go in this direction with the character, and he said, “Well, I’m very interested in origin stories. Also the Bullseye from the comics, he goes to 11, they would say. I wanted to have a backstory for how someone could actually become like that.”
“I actually think that Ben Poindexter — the character who may or may not end up becoming Bullseye in the future — could have been a hero and a functional person had he not been drawn into darkness by a narcissistic tyrant who’s trying to manipulate him and kick out his legs from under him. And that was for me, symbolic of those types of dangerous personalities who’ve risen to power and bring people into the dark,” Oleson said. “It’s a real person who’s drawn into darkness, it’s not just a cartoon.”

Hart of Dixie alum Wilson Bethel was chosen to play this iconic baddie and said that there was “additional pressure…stepping into the shoes of a character that people feel really passionately about.”
“There’s no question that I was very nervous going into this,” Bethel said. “Then once you start reading the material, you’re like, ‘Holy shit.’ What’s being asked of me in terms of performance and in terms of depth of character, these are really tall orders.”
Daredevil Season 3 imagines Poindexter’s backstory as one of an orphan, haunted by rage issues and sociopathy. A helpful child psychologist helps Dex figure out coping tools to help him live a normal life, but after her death, he’s left without a proverbial “north star.” The Kingpin manages to understand Poindexter via an inventive tableau of scenes that show the master criminal watching key moments of the agents’ life in black and white. Actor Vincent D’Onofrio told Decider that he didn’t know that the scene were going to be in black and white until recently. 

“The dynamic between the two of them is kind of this awful kind of dynamic,” D’Onofrio said. “There’s like a chemistry between these two men, but Fisk is using that chemistry to manipulate him even though its a real chemistry. So there’s kind of this awful thing going on. It’s just a terrible thing to do to somebody. But it works storywise.”
The first time Daredevil and Bullseye finally square off is a thrilling tete-a-tete at the end of Episode 6, “The Devil You Know.” Daredevil is at the Bulletin to help get a witness on the record against Kingpin, and the newly “freed” Dex has been dispatched to kill this man — while being fully clad in Daredevil’s iconic red suit. When the two men collide, the battle is electric and it fully encapsulates the brutality of their relationship from the comics.
“One of my favorite things about that particular fight scene — about this dynamic in general — is that it’s very easy to write those fight scenes in a way that is story-driven because of their fighting styles,” Charlie Cox said. “One thing that we talked about very early on was being like when these two come together, Matt’s goal is to get them as close as he can and fight inside because Poindexter is no match for him in that realm. And of course because of Poindexter’s skill set his goal is to get great distance and use objects to get to injure Matt. It’s one of the clearest scenes to tell a story in without words.

Wilson Bethel pointed out that it’s “an interesting moment…from a character perspective.”
Bethel said, “In some ways like this liberation moment for Dex. It’s almost like his aggression is coming from a place of joy. In some weird way, he’s been free to the world and from Matt’s perspective, he’s defending the people he loves most in the world. It’s this very bizarre collision.”
“Erik [Oleson] talks a lot about like what are the motivations and the wants and desires of people in any scene. And that doesn’t change just because it’s a fight scene,” Bethel said. “So we’re going into a fight coming from very different places and the aggression, the physical violence comes from very different sources in a scene like that.”
Additional reporting by Brett White.

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