The latest season of Daredevil is pretty good and has a great magic moment. I’m not sure if this season counts as the fourth season of the Daredevil series or if it is its own thing that just happens to be continuing the previous story. The scene I’ll be discussing takes place in the third episode. Matt’s team needs to bring a witness to the courthouse. The opposing team is trying to prevent this at all costs.
Spoilers for the episode below.
The scene isn’t on youtube so I’ll briefly describe what happens. The witness leaves the safehouse with Cherry, a former policeman who is now working for Matt’s firm and the owner of the safehouse. Cherry opens the back door of his van and the other two move in. Cherry drives away. A corrupt cop follows the van on a motorcycle. The motorcycle cuts the van off. The corrupt cop tells Cherry to get out of the vehicle and open the doors of the van. Cherry does so and the van is revealed to be empty. Back in front of the courthouse, the witness arrives with the safehouse owner in a taxi.
I have to admit that I was fooled by this scene.
What makes this scene work is the framing from the POV of the corrupt cop. We see Cherry open the doors to the van and the witness walk behind them and it’s easy to make the obvious assumption that the witness has entered the vehicle. Using the doors of the van to hide the witness to entering a taxi is a brilliant idea of natural movement and cover. The camera then follows the van and reinforces the belief that the witness is in the van. This is one of the simplest forms of misdirection. The magician looks where he or she wants the audience to look. This might happen when performing a vanish; the magician will follow the empty hand with their eyes while the other hand ditches the item.
All the attention to detail put together makes this scene work and this level of effort makes the show great.