Warning! This article contains spoilers for Daredevil #30!
Marvel’s new Daredevil, Elektra, just turned her sidekick into a killer during their latest mission to eliminate crime in Hell’s Kitchen. Since Matt Murdock was sentenced to prison for the manslaughter of a low-level criminal, Elektra Natchios has taken over as the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Lately, Elektra hasn’t had to fight crime alone since gaining an apprentice out of the King in Black invasion. While Elektra swore to Matt she wouldn’t kill anyone while taking up the mantle of Daredevil to keep the people of Hell’s Kitchen safe, it seems as though Elektra’s influence inadvertently rubbed off on her protege.
In Daredevil #30 by Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto, and Mike Hawthorne, Elektra and her apprentice, Alice, barge into a nightclub to take down a local drug pusher. The man the vigilantes are after, Butch, is the supposed son of Wilson Fisk and has been put in charge of drug distribution and enforcement by the current Kingpin of New York, Izzy Libris while Fisk focuses on being mayor. Daredevil attempts to speak with Butch, perhaps to convince him to stop inflicting pain on the people of Hell’s Kitchen in the form of narcotics and violence. Before the conversation gets very far, Daredevil is attacked by a mysterious assailant, beginning a chain of events leading to that person’s death at the hands of a child.
While Daredevil is fighting a brute eerily resembling the horror movie icon Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th, her apprentice, Alice, is battling another goon on the other side of the dance floor. That grunt had a gun, and after Alice took him down by putting into action the training she received from Elektra, she grabbed the gun and ran to assist her master. Upon seeing Daredevil nearly killed by the Friday the 13th enthusiast, Alice shoots the villain, killing him instantly. With tears streaming down her face, Alice tries to explain herself before fainting from the shock of taking a life.
After Alice faints, Daredevil looks back at the Jason look-alike to discover that his body was gone, not taken but vanished. Elektra realizes then that the person she was fighting, who Alice killed, wasn’t a person at all, but a member of the Hand. Elektra has been warned of the Hand's return since the start of the current Daredevil run. The ancient gang of immortal ninjas have consistently threatened the world and have always been some of the main antagonists for both Matt Murdock and Elektra. While fans haven’t seen any evidence of the Hand since Daredevil Vol. 6 first launched, this last issue revealed they are now an imminent threat.
The irony present in Alice committing murder while working with Elektra is entirely due to the original Daredevil, Matt Murdock. The only reason Elektra was being beaten badly enough to make Alice think she needed to intervene was that she was going out of her way to not deliver a fatal blow. Elektra was upholding Matt’s ‘no killing’ rule while she takes over as Daredevil, but because she didn’t kill the brute, her kid sidekick did instead, turning Alice into the killer that Elektra is trying not to be.