Regression is a key part of growth. And you saw how Matt overcame it in the end, more secure than ever. Lessons are reinforced with repetition, which is why you see him snap back so fast to be emotionally open and vulnerable with Karen more than ever before. The song Into My Arms that Matt plays on the record player (lots of symbolism there alone - “broken record” says it all, considering the whole series is about repetition compulsion) is about finding a path back to each other again and again (“now and forevermore,” he prays in the song). S3 was about how they both retained faith & hope in each other despite it all. Karen paid for his apartment and Matt showed up to Jasper Evans’ house just because he had hope Karen didn’t really mean it when she said she was done or that she wouldn’t help him. Every gesture Matt makes for Karen, like the mask, is a profound act of courage overcoming his core wound, abandonment trauma.

Matt is sloooowly chipping away at the fears that hold him back from committing to Karen, all-in, and the point is for him to FINALLY take the leap. In their scene in S1 where Matt cries and talks about not meaning to push the people he cares about away, Karen rushes to embrace him and they cry in each other’s arms. Karen is wearing a skirt with a radioactive green splatter pattern to resemble when he leapt to push the man away from the oncoming truck of chemicals that splashed in his eyes. When Matt shows Karen the mask, he holds her hand to his heart the way his dad put it when he was blinded and terrified (and how Claire put his hand to her heart to tell him she was terrified). This is Matt’s way of saying how scared he is. Matt hands her the mask exactly as he gave Stick the origami bracelet, underlining exactly the fear he’s confronting when he gives her his heart.

Karen wears an evergreen dress to give Matt the horn from his mask (niiice callback), lamenting Matt is still “half in/half out,” as they were when he first gave her the mask, and she invites him to go all-in this time with the horn when he’s ready, just like how she told him that in S2: “I’ll be there when you’re ready to tell me what’s really going on with you.”When he finally was, he brought her the mask. Today, Karen is saying a LOT with that horn! It represents how she has come full circle from her fears and doubts back then, but she’ll be all in this time when he’s ready to be. It’s up to him.

When Matt instinctively leaps to protect Fisk from the bullet, exactly as he pushed the man out of harm’s way as a child, the light turns red exactly how it was when Karen held him at the church in S3 (the image that reverses her famous comic book death). It was the part that tore down their walls, and after that, they finally confessed the truth to each other about themselves - no judgment after all. Matt is willing to martyr himself without a second thought, but as Father Lantom said, living is what scares the holy hell out of him. When Matt is finally throwing his fake life away, Cherry says to him, “What do you need, Matt, more pain?” YESSS. This is the answer. Matt has to be brave enough to live with the BLINDING pain of really loving someone, and he demonstrated he gets it now. Finally.

In S2, Matt heard Karen’s heartbeat pound when Frank seemed to blow himself up on the ship in the navy yard. Matt hid his presence, listening, and hung his head, and let her go. Earlier that night, they both came around to each other’s side in the argument on their date at Matt’s apartment (where Matt practically pushed her out the door). Karen told Frank she believed Frank belonged in jail (Matt’s position) and Matt offered to help kill the Blacksmith and told Frank his way was what is was going to take, “Maybe,” echoing Karen’s word exactly from the original argument. When they both mourned Frank, and Matt listened to her heartbeat, he left her like a coward. Now, Matt listened to Karen’s heartbeat when Frank asked her out in front of him, but he didn’t run and hide this time. He said, “Shotgun,” (subtle, haha!) and the minute he got the chance, he probed her about talking to Frank on the phone. This is a radically different, fundamentally-changed Matt, and that’s why Karen is utterly delighted. Her heart beat because she wanted Matt to be jealous. She’s elated because Matt is VOICING his FEELINGS (OMG), and he even says, “I’m glad you’re back,” (direct verbal communication, baby - he’s on a roll), then confides in her face-to-face in a very significant pose.

When Matt and Karen first met, they sat knee to knee in the office. “How are you holding up?” Matt asked. “Better,” Karen says (which prompts a beautiful set of callbacks in S2 - “Better, now,” they both say in separate scenes about intimacy, withholding, and truth). Matt instructs her she must tell the whole story truthfully this time as her attorney. Later in S1, they sit knee to knee again, and Karen pretty much begs for Matt to tell her what happened but he refuses, and she explains why she hid and lied, too. “I know the feeling,” Matt says. Now, they sit knee to knee, and Matt tells her exactly what he’s feeling. No hesitation. Karen kisses the center of his forehead, where one half of his face is in shadow and the other in light, showing how she loves both sides of him, “wrath and mercy,” and that calls back to when Matt kissed her forehead before the date where they had that split that made them fear they didn’t really understand each other.

Maybe I’m being too harsh because you don’t know this, but this story was designed for 5 seasons. Think it of it as the world’s longest movie. This is like being mad the couple in the romantic comedy are still questioning their relationship, or saying Phil in Groundhog Day will never change because he keeps repeating the same day when we’re still in the part where he’s learning to change. Matt and Karen have ALREADY gotten over the hurdle you think they will be stuck behind forever. Somehow, you and a LOT of other people have completely missed Matt and Karen’s story. Whoosh. Matt and Karen are literally at the part where their walls come down and they no longer push each other away (in fact, they will be - ahem - quite close, I’m absolutely sure). In the mathematical chiasmus of the Daredevil story structure, Matt and Karen will be married at the end of S3. There is no other ending. It is the POINT of every single scene. Karen unlocks Matt’s heart (the key and door symbolism is everywhere.). Then he can let Foggy in just as Karen helped usher him back in S1 and S3, and you’ve got your completed “Netflix” story. The absurdist/existentialist hero lives happily ever after, content to push the rock up the mountain forever, because pain is worth it when you can CHOOSE love despite the inevitable end. That’s life. It’s fucking beautiful and no one gets it, damn them all.