Warning! This article contains major spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again episode 9. If you’ve yet to tune in, and don’t want to know anything that happens, turn back now.
Daredevil: Born Again’s Justin Benson and Austin Moorhead have revealed Kingpin actor Vincent D’Onofrio’s reaction to that shocking death in the Marvel show’s finale – and it was unexpectedly enthusiastic.
In ‘Straight to Hell’, which landed on Disney Plus on April 15, Wilson Fisk (D’Onofrio) murders Gallo (Michael Gaston) with his bare hands, after the NYPD Commissioner pushes him just that little bit too far. Ever since Fisk was elected, Gallo had been vocal about his disapproval of the city’s new mayor, due to his criminal past and violent tendencies – and in the end, it seems he was proved right to doubt whether Fisk had really changed.
Turns out that D’Onofrio was just as keen to embrace Fisk’s dark side, again, with the episode’s co-directors admitting that the actor was “obsessed” with the scene during filming in a new interview with Bloody Disgusting.
“I remember every time we’d be at the studio, walking through the hallways and running into Vincent,” Benson recalled to the publication. “We became close with Vincent really quickly, one of our best friends now today, but every time we walked through the studio and ran into him, he’d be like, ‘Guys, I think we should talk. Let’s talk about this head crush scene.’
“Vincent was obsessed with this head crush, and I only say that half joking,” he went on. “He was really the team leader on this thing.”
“We thought we were pretty excited about doing it,” Moorhead added. “We were pretty excited, but he was all in.”
Elsewhere, Gaston reflected on Gallo’s mindset when he goes to confront Fisk towards the end of the episode: “There’s no fight. There’s no point in fighting again. He has no idea just how insanely grisly and how violent it’s going to be. But he knows it’s going to end.”
He concluded: “I think there was a resignation; Gallo knows what’s coming his way, and he’s made his piece in the car with the young man who’s there to replace his driver. He knows at that point, when he sees the kid’s tattoo, that this is it.”
Daredevil: Born Again is available to stream in full on Disney Plus now. Itching for more, check out our guide to Daredevil: Born Again season 2.
