For Matt Murdock, defending Hector Ayala is about more than just helping someone he believes is innocent. It’s about sticking it to the dirty cops at the NYPD, sending a message to them and Mayor Fisk that this city will not stand for corruption — that sometimes vigilantism, while an imperfect solution to a systemic problem, may sometimes be a necessary corrective when no other form of justice can be found.

Episode three is another court-heavy episode, the second half of a story that began last episode. Officer Powell, whom many viewers thought Matt straight-up killed in Nicky’s apartment, is already back to witness tampering and accusing Matt of interfering with a police investigation. It’s a little hard to take his threats too seriously when we just saw the legendary beatdown that left him unconscious and bloody on the floor, but the police shouldn’t be underestimated, especially with Commissioner Gallo in Fisk’s pocket. During Powell’s testimony, he and District Attorney Hochberg paint the late Officer Shanahan as a great, upstanding man who just wanted to make the city a safer place to live.

Instrumental to Hector’s defense is key witness Nicky, whom Cherry has secured at a safe house with enough drugs to keep him calm for his big moment. On the stand, Powell denies knowledge of any confidential informant, and some overheard murmurs from the cops on the benches confirm to Matt that they will not allow Nicky to take the stand easily. It takes some crafty maneuvering for Cherry to get Nicky to the courthouse in one piece, driving a decoy to throw Powell and the others off the scent. But after making it there just in the nick of time (no pun intended), Nicky ultimately caves to the pressure of the admittedly scary NYPD. He admits to becoming a CI after an arrest for dealing drugs, sure, but he denies leaving home on the night of the subway attack. It’s easy to understand Matt’s anger and frustration in this moment; with no paper trail, where can the defense even go from here?

The only option, really, is to put Hector on the stand. Kamar de los Reyes did a great job introducing this character in “Optics,” and he’s even better this time, imbuing an important comic character with real humanity. It’s easy to see why his testimony strikes a chord with the jury, including the detail that he’d been planning to surprise his wife with a new studio apartment in the South Bronx that next day. But what really seals the win for the defense is Matt’s risky choice to expose Hector as White Tiger despite actively suppressing that information last week.

Matt’s own vigilante double identity plays into this, of course, and his conversation with Hector following this dramatic moment is a highlight of the episode. When Hector insists that he’ll always be White Tiger and that he could never truly retire that identity even if he hung up the suit, it shows that he’s clearer-headed about that duality than Matt. Then again, Matt also has a point when he suggests that Hector should be there for his family at this time, that he might actually enjoy his life more as Hector Ayala.

There is a slight corniness to the series of grateful court testimonies that follow, a scene that feels a little more “yay, superheroes!” than the old Daredevil usually got. Or maybe I’m just a little resistant to the police glorification strategy Matt and Kirsten use: showing the jury that Hector saves cops, actually, and even helps them arrest suspects. After some pushback from Hochberg, the acquittal comes through, and it’s very inspirational. Of course, the end of the episode shows that this was never going to end well: Fisk is privately and publicly furious with the verdict, and he must stick to the anti-vigilante promise on which he ran for mayor.

So when a newly released Hector takes to the streets once again as White Tiger, someone with a Punisher skull on their T-shirt comes out of nowhere to shoot him in the head. Over the credits, we hear the sound of coquí frogs whistling over the wash of waves, perhaps a suggestion of what Hector heard as he died, memories of the home he never got to see again. Matt assured him he’d be back on those beaches one day.

Hector’s death definitely raises the stakes of the season, connecting this mini-arc to the larger Fisk story that has otherwise stayed separate from Matt’s recent work. It also keeps with the original show’s dark, realistic tone, though part of me wishes we didn’t have to lose such a likable new character so soon.

Fisk’s story in episode three is also interesting-ish, though it still mostly feels like setup until that big moment with White Tiger. He and Vanessa are still disagreeing about how exactly to handle the various criminal factions they’re allowing to run loose in Red Hook; Vanessa has her own ideas, like laundering money through expensive painting sales, but Fisk is insistent on prioritizing his more ambitious goals and staying clean, or at least his version of clean. To him, it’s not worth getting involved with the petty squabbles of Luca and Viktor; they’ll kill each other, and Fisk will be better off for it. But Vanessa orders Buck to deliver the message of what Luca owes to Viktor, which only exacerbates the tension between her and her husband. He even suggests he’s starting not to trust her, though she insists what he’s really doing is punishing her for sleeping with someone else.

I’m intrigued by these marital spats and curious if it could lead to Vanessa breaking from Fisk and taking control. But I agree with him, in a way: It’s hard to get super invested in the lower-level criminal schisms at this point. Episode three has plenty to recommend, especially in the Hector story, but I have to admit I’m a little impatient for the action to kick in, or at least to see Matt and Fisk come in direct contact again, or at least to see Matt’s pro-vigilante defense extend to accepting that he’s Daredevil already and stop limiting his powers to the courtroom. Daredevil works as a legal drama, but it’s at its best when the heroes get in the muck.

Devil in the Details

• Outside a brief glimpse of Heather in a session with Fisk and Vanessa, she mainly appears in one scene here, toasting to Foggy Nelson after Matt reminisces about his old best friend. It’s a nice conversation, folding her a little more into the show’s deep history, though I still think this relationship happened a little quickly.

• Maybe part of my slight dissatisfaction comes from the loss of directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, who made that first episode look and sound so good. Visually speaking, these last two episodes have paled a bit in comparison. Kudos on the credits sound mixing, though, which is an inspired touch.

 I’m getting impatient waiting for Matt to accept that he’s Daredevil.