What You Need to Know Before Watching ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ – The Ringer

In 2015, Netflix’s Daredevil reintroduced the Man Without Fear to the screen-watching world. More than a decade had passed since Ben Affleck starred as the blind superhero and attorney on the big screen, and the TV series sought to separate itself from 20th Century Fox’s take on the character. With its grounded approach and dark tone, Daredevil became the cornerstone of Netflix’s own Marvel universe, which featured five series (including Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and The Punisher) and a crossover miniseries (The Defenders). All of these TV shows were produced by Marvel Television and ABC Studios, and although some of them were successful, each was canceled between 2018 and 2019. Marvel TV came to an abrupt conclusion at Netflix as a path was cleared for Marvel Studios to start producing its own TV series to support the launch of Disney+ in November 2019. But even when Daredevil was canceled in November 2018, Marvel made it clear that it wouldn’t be the last time that fans would see the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. “We look forward to more adventures with the Man without Fear in the future,” Marvel said in a statement.More than six years since Daredevil met its demise at Netflix, the series has been resurrected at Disney+ with a fitting new title: Daredevil: Born Again.The revival series has followed a long, bumpy road en route to its arrival this week with a two-episode premiere on Tuesday. Born Again endured a challenging production process that saw Marvel Studios reboot the project with a new creative direction after six episodes had already been filmed. But Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio have already reprised their roles as Daredevil and Kingpin, respectively, in four different MCU projects. As Marvel Studios launched new TV series fronted by lesser-known characters such as Echo and She-Hulk, the two Hell’s Kitchen rivals were used to draw in fans who were eager to see how the Daredevil characters would be reintegrated into a wider universe of superheroes and aliens. Now, Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk—Daredevil and the Kingpin—are finally returning in a story of their own.Ahead of the premiere of Born Again, here’s everything you need to know about the original Netflix series, Daredevil’s and Kingpin’s recent appearances in the MCU, and the creative overhaul of both the series and Marvel Studios’ approach to making TV. The 39 episodes of Daredevil and the eight-episode season of The Defenders that featured Murdock encompass too much material to recap it all in this primer. That’s the same dilemma Marvel Studios faced when it decided to reboot the series with Cox and D’Onofrio playing the same parts. Initially, Matt Corman and Chris Ord were hired as the head writers of the series, and their story largely ignored the events of its predecessor. When the Writers Guild of America went on strike in May 2023, Daredevil production was halted, providing an opportunity for the studio and the show’s producers to review the footage compiled to that point and realize that it wasn’t working. Corman and Ord were replaced by Dario Scardapane, who had been an executive producer and writer on The Punisher, and the duo of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (Moon Knight, Loki Season 2) joined as lead directors. Much of Corman and Ord’s material survived and was repurposed in the overhaul, and Scardapane oversaw the shooting of three more episodes’ worth of material. In addition to tweaking the structure and tone of the show, Scardapane brought back much of the cast and crew from the original Netflix series, including stunt and fight coordinator Phil Silvera, who was responsible for Daredevil’s memorable, bloody action sequences. Born Again now fully embraces its Netflix history.“I would consider it a fourth season,” D’Onofrio said in a recent interview with IGN. “It’s a new path. We kind of blow it up, the past. But it’s there, and it’s connected. … It needed the connection to the Netflix show. It needed the other characters to come back. … And the other iteration wouldn’t have had that. It was just straight up, ‘Hey, forget what you just saw, this is what we’re doing.’ That was tough for me to swallow.”When the original series debuted in 2015, there was nothing else quite like it in the world of superheroes. Daredevil’s violence was graphic: Murdock broke his enemies in gruesome ways while taking his fair share of punches. Its heroes and villains were grounded, with neither side completely good or bad.Across three seasons of Daredevil, Murdock protected New York City from all kinds of threats, both as a lawyer and partner at his firm—Nelson and Murdock—and as his lethal alter ego. Matt; his legal partner, Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson); and their client turned office manager, Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), make a lot of enemies over the years as they fight the city’s corrupt institutions and crime lords like Fisk to defend the victims of an imperfect system. One of those victims is Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), the violent antihero known as the Punisher. Castle, Nelson, and Page are all returning in Born Again, along with Fisk’s wife, Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer), and the sharpshooting villain Bullseye (Wilson Bethel). These supporting characters, as well as those who won’t be returning (such as Vondie Curtis-Hall’s journalist Ben Urich), were crucial to the success of the original Netflix series. But the heart of its story was always the rivalry between Murdock and Fisk.Kingpin is such a good villain because he’s both a complex character and the perfect foil for Murdock. Despite their different approaches, they each share the belief that they’re acting in New York City’s best interests and tap into their inner darkness to achieve their goals. Fisk is Daredevil’s primary antagonist in the first and third seasons, and he plays an important role in the second season as well even though he’s in prison for its duration.At the conclusion of Daredevil, Fisk returns to prison, Bullseye—who had recently been paralyzed in a fight with Fisk—undergoes an experimental surgery to repair his spine, and the trio of Nelson, Murdock, and Page consider the idea of restarting their practice together, with Page continuing in her new role as a private investigator. Born Again might not pick up directly where Daredevil left off, but the new series sets out to honor the old show’s legacy while forging a path of its own. Our Top Moments From Netflix’s ‘Daredevil’Our Top Moments From Netflix’s ‘Daredevil’Our Top Moments From Netflix’s ‘Daredevil’While Born Again will mark the reintroduction of the Daredevil franchise, Cox’s Murdock and D’Onofrio’s Fisk have been keeping busy with their new neighbors in the MCU.After Daredevil and the other shows from the Defenders Saga were scrapped in 2018 and 2019, a contract prevented any of Netflix’s Marvel characters from appearing in any non-Netflix series or film for at least two years after each series’ cancellation. But once that window closed, Marvel Studios wasted little time in easing those characters back into the fold, beginning with Daredevil and Kingpin. Cox brought Murdock to the MCU for the first time in 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, in a very minor part. Murdock appeared in just a single scene in the film, and he did so in his legal capacity. When Mysterio reveals Spider-Man’s secret identity to the public, Peter Parker faces some serious legal issues. And so Matt Murdock, attorney at law, steps in and helps get Peter’s charges dropped. Murdock delivers the good news to Peter, Aunt May, and Happy Hogan, and he sticks around long enough to show off his impressive reflexes when a brick flies through the window toward his client. Although this scene was pretty inconsequential for the film, it was Marvel’s way of signposting that Daredevil was back.Murdock next appeared in 2022’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law—this time, as both lawyer and superhero. In the eighth episode of the TV series, Murdock appears opposite Jen Walters in court as he represents fashion icon Luke Jacobson, whom we later discover has designed a new yellow and red suit for the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. After Walters’s client Leap-Frog—a pitiful excuse for a vigilante—makes a dumb mistake that costs them the case, he calls Walters for protection from an unknown assailant. That assailant turns out to be Daredevil himself.When She-Hulk and Daredevil have a quick fight, Jen gets the best of him, going as far as removing his mask to reveal his secret identity. Matt explains that Jen’s client had actually kidnapped his client, and the two team up to take down Leap-Frog and save Jacobson. Once the fighting’s all over, they return to Jen’s apartment in Los Angeles, and, well, one thing leads to another. We don’t need to get into the details of how the rest of their night went, but for context, here’s what the morning after looked like for Matt:Murdock briefly returns at the end of She-Hulk’s fourth-wall-breaking finale to join Jen for a Hulk family BBQ, where he gets the chance to meet Bruce Banner and his son, Skaar. We don’t know for sure how Murdock and Walters left their relationship at the end of his cross-country trip from New York to L.A., but Jen has already introduced the guy to her parents, so it might not be the last time we see them together.The third and final time Matt popped up in an MCU project before Born Again was in 2024’s Echo, the Hawkeye spinoff series that centers on Alaqua Cox’s Maya Lopez. Echo also features D’Onofrio’s Kingpin in a massive role as the show builds on the events of Hawkeye. While Murdock made his splashy return on the big screen in No Way Home, Kingpin first appeared in Hawkeye’s finale, just a week after No Way Home’s theatrical release.In Hawkeye, Kingpin is teased to be the mysterious man who’s referred to only as “Uncle” for much of the season. Lopez runs a crime syndicate known as the Tracksuit Mafia, who have a bit of a history with Clint Barton, the arrow-slinging former Avenger. But Fisk—who became something of a father figure and mentor to Lopez after Hawkeye killed her real father, who had been working for Fisk as a member of the Tracksuit Mafia—is revealed as the true power controlling the organization from the shadows. In the finale, D’Onofrio makes his grand entrance—wearing quite the memorable outfit to mark the occasion—to fight Barton and his protégé, Kate Bishop. And after Fisk is defeated, he runs into Lopez while he’s making his escape. Lopez had recently discovered that Fisk helped arrange her father’s death, so when she confronts him, she shoots him in the head.Of course, since we’re in the world of superheroes here, Fisk survives the gunshot without any lasting damage. He’s next seen at the end of the series premiere of Echo, asleep in a hospital bed with an eye patch covering the spot where Lopez shot him. The premiere follows Lopez through the years, going all the way back to her childhood, in what is essentially her origin story (as well as a recap for anyone who skipped Hawkeye). The episode shows how she started to work for Fisk after he promised to help her find the man who killed her father. In one of her first missions with the Tracksuits, she has a run-in with Daredevil, and the two fight it out until he eventually flees the scene. It’s another brief cameo for Cox but a memorable one that added some star power to Echo’s opener while also revealing that Murdock was still keeping tabs on Fisk’s criminal activities.The remainder of Echo explores Lopez’s relationship with her family and her Choctaw heritage as she returns to her hometown in Tamaha, Oklahoma. But she doesn’t let go of her grudge against Fisk, as she continues to meddle with his operations from afar. When Fisk comes to visit her, he offers to give her his criminal empire if she returns to New York with him and sets their differences aside. Maya responds by paying him a visit that night, gun in hand, with the intention of finishing what she started in Hawkeye. Except she wavers when Fisk invites her to kill him with the same hammer he had used to kill his own father in Daredevil. Lopez leaves, returning to Tamaha instead of following Fisk back to New York, enraging him in the process. In the finale, Lopez fights Fisk and his crew to save her kidnapped family. And she uses her newfound healing abilities—passed down from her mother—on Fisk in an attempt to rid him of the trauma of his violent childhood. He awakens from the trance she places him in, screaming, “What did you do?” And then he simply packs it up and hightails it back to New York, with a mid-credits scene showing him on his private plane as he watches a news segment on the mayoral race in New York City. It’s unclear whether Maya’s actions will have any lasting impact on Fisk in Born Again, but the stinger foreshadowed one of the central plotlines in the upcoming Daredevil series, as Fisk steps into politics.Although Echo was fairly aligned with the darker tone of Daredevil, Cox’s Murdock and D’Onofrio’s Fisk were a bit out of place in She-Hulk and Hawkeye, respectively, which were more comedic, family-friendly projects. “If you take the Matt Murdock from our show and you put him in She-Hulk as is, he’s probably overly serious and becomes the butt of all jokes,” Cox told IGN. “So he’s got to adapt to the tone. And there’s a lot of precedent in the comics. There are many runs in the comics where there’s a lot of levity, a lot of tongue in cheek, a lot of fun.”“And Hawkeye was the same for me,” D’Onofrio added in the group interview. “It’s a whole different tone.”With Born Again, the actors will finally reunite on-screen, on a show that hews much closer to the one they originally starred in together. (It’s probably safe to say that we won’t be seeing a Daredevil walk of shame or Fisk wearing a Hawaiian shirt this time around.) And their characters will be bringing a lot of baggage with them.The creative overhaul of Born Again represented not only a key shift in this upcoming MCU series but also a change that extends to the studio’s entire approach to TV. Although Marvel Studios has made a few standout series, most notably WandaVision and Loki, it’s also had more than its fair share of shows that didn’t work. And it seems like a big reason for that has been Marvel’s decision to treat its TV shows like its movies. The studio chose to ignore staples of the traditional TV-making process, such as showrunners and show bibles, and instead depended on film executives to lead the way and relied on postproduction and reshoots to fix any issues.“TV is a writer-driven medium,” an insider familiar with the Marvel process told The Hollywood Reporter in October 2023. “Marvel is a Marvel-driven medium.”Born Again appears to be Marvel’s first attempt to “marry the Marvel culture with the traditional television culture,” a revamped approach that Marvel Studios executive Brad Winderbaum described to THR. Daredevil is the most highly anticipated TV project that the studio has released in quite some time, and how the series performs—both critically and commercially—will surely shape Marvel’s evolving small-screen formula. Production on the show’s second season is already beginning this week.Daredevil might be just the beginning of the convergence of the former Netflix Marvel heroes in the MCU. Winderbaum spoke carefully in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, but he hinted that the likes of Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist could be following in Daredevil’s footsteps soon enough. “I can’t say much, but I’ll tell you that it’s so exciting to be able to play in that sandbox,” Winderbaum said. “Obviously we don’t have the unlimited storytelling resources like a comic book. If you can draw it, you can do it. It’s dealing with actors and time and the massive scale of production in order to build a cinematic universe, especially on television. But I can just say that all those variables taken into account, it is certainly something that is creatively extremely exciting and that we are very much exploring.”Considering the sorry state of affairs in the MCU, it’s a little concerning that Born Again is yet another attempt by Marvel Studios to push through its recent creative and commercial struggles by drawing on its nostalgia-fueled past. But as the studio looks to return to basics when it comes to creating TV, there’s no better place to start than Daredevil.Latest in MarvelYep, we have one tooWe’ve been around since Brady was a QB

Source: https://theringer.com/2025/03/03/marvel/daredevil-born-again-primer-mcu-netflix-matt-murdock-kingpin