How Kingpin’s Painting In Daredevil Hints At His Past

Kingpin’s painting “Rabbit in a Snowstorm” hints at the character’s traumatic past, and serves as a lynchpin of his development over the course of his Daredevil season 1 arc. The enigmatic Wilson Fisk is granted a memorable entrance in Daredevil season 1, episode 3, “Rabbit in a Snowstorm,” where the camera pans to reveal the hulking figure of Fisk standing entranced before the white-on-white painting. The Kingpin is the shadow cast over the rotten core of Hell’s Kitchen, and he might have easily been a simple, shallow Marvel villain in line with the movie offerings around the launch of the series in early 2015. However, Daredevil uses the Rabbit in a Snowstorm painting to open a window into Fisk’s soul.

A strength of Daredevil is undeniably its ability to dive beyond the black-and-white surface of its characters, with Kingpin serving to fix the MCU’s villain imbalance as an example of the show’s ability to draw out the nuanced shades of grey in its antagonists and heroes alike. Daredevil uses the painting and Kingpin’s art dealer and love interest Vanessa to peel the layers of the strangely empathetic character back, revealing a traumatized childhood at the hands of a cruel father. Daredevil season 1, episode 8, “Shadows in the Glass” reveals that Kingpin’s abusive father sat him before a peeling white wall, reminiscent of the Rabbit in a Snowstorm painting, and demanded that he consider the type of man he wanted to become.

In gaining possession of Rabbit in a Snowstorm, Kingpin is taking control of his narrative. The powerlessness Kingpin feels in his childhood echoes throughout his development into adulthood, and the trauma sticks to his soul like tar when he recalls murdering his father to save his mother from his abuse. The painting helps to explain Kingpin’s MCU backstory, in which it reminds him of his decision to become the man he is in that moment, and in buying it, serves as a reminder to bring him back to the fork in the path where he swore not to be cruel for the sake of cruelty like his father. Unfortunately, as Daredevil showed, he wasn’t always able to hold true to that vow.

The Rabbit in a Snowstorm painting also serves as a metaphor for a clean slate in Kingpin’s future life. The painting starts out as a reminder for Kingpin of the horrible memory of his first murder, guilt mingled with the resolve to not become the type of man his father was. However, upon acquiring it from Vanessa, its meaning shifts. The blank wall’s association with the painting is slowly etched out of his mind, and instead of trauma, the painting serves as a fresh canvas, one on which he can paint a new life with Vanessa heading into Kingpin’s MCU future.

Kingpin expresses his desire in Daredevil season 1, episode 5, “World on Fire” to “carve something beautiful out of [the] ugliness” in New York City. Kingpin’s antagonistic ends are propelled by his ideology that he has poetic, artistic motivations. The character’s appreciation for beauty from the ugliness around him starts with the ugliness of his childhood, and ends in his love for Vanessa, with the Rabbit in a Snowstorm painting serving as his bridge between trauma and the beauty which overcomes it. Kingpin enters the next phase of his existence with the woman he loves, and the painting is a reminder from her of all the hope she represents as he moves forwards in his life. Daredeviluses the Rabbit in a Snowstorm painting to paint shades of grey out of its first major antagonist. The result is ultimately one of Marvel’s most compelling villains to date.

Next: Is Hawkeye’s Kingpin The Same Version As Daredevil?

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