The Devil is having an identity crisis.
When we reconnect with Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) in Disney+ series Daredevil: Born Again, Marvel TV's blind attorney with superhuman senses no longer stalks the streets of New York City as the horned defender of Hell's Kitchen. He quit his vigilante habits cold turkey a year earlier, when a certain unknown line was crossed. The urge, however, remains. The buttoned-up Mr. Murdock can't quite stifle that familiar, almost intoxicating chemical reaction that occurs in the body when his wrath threatens to take over. Like a recovering rageaholic, temptation begins to simmer in the morning as he catches up on local media coverage of the mayoral race over a cup of coffee, or as he sits in a court room defending a pro-bono client from condemnation by a corrupt system.
A question he cannot answer lingers: Who is Matt Murdock if he can't unleash his inner demon?
The series he stars in faced a comparable quandary. In 2023, Marvel began filming an 18-episode first season of Daredevil: Born Again, the culmination of long-laid plans to welcome the street-level superhero back into the character stable of Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe. The title spoke volumes to fans. It was like Daredevil, the original Marvel superhero drama with Cox that ran on Netflix from 2015-2018, was now literally born again. The beginning of this shoot marked four years since Netflix scrubbed that show — and all the Defenders spinoffs it spawned — from the streaming service, including Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and The Punisher. And joining Cox on this new saga was his longtime Daredevil counterpart, Vincent D'Onofrio, as imposing underworld "Kingpin" Wilson Fisk, as well as Jon Bernthal as gun-touting angel of vengeance Frank Castle/Punisher. But as they say, the devil is in the details, and those details needed work.
By that June, production halted after about three months due to the Hollywood writers' strike, a pause prolonged further by the following actors' strike. Marvel took that time to review what they had already shot and came to the conclusion that something was off. "Not that it didn't work, but it was a little bit confusing," Cox, now sporting a fully grown salt-and-pepper beard and black beanie, tells Entertainment Weekly. "It was too, 'Is it the show or is it not the show?'" — meaning, is it the same drama as Netflix's Daredevil or a reboot?
The head of Marvel TV, Brad Winderbaum, says it came down to how much history from those early Netflix series they wanted to layer on top of Disney's already complicated story told across 35 films and 14 Disney+ series (to date). "It led to a feeling of, maybe we don't have to define it. Maybe we can play it loose," he recalls, speaking to EW from his action-figure stacked office. "It really wasn't clear until we watched the series after the strike that we had to choose."
So Marvel parted ways with original Born Again writers Matt Corman and Chris Ord, and hired a new showrunner (The Punisher's Dario Scardapane) to overhaul the project. Instead of 18 episodes, the first season will consist of nine installments (two premiering on Disney+ on March 4), with the remaining order spun off into a second season, which is gearing up to film within five days of the season 1 launch. And joining the two lead veterans are their former costars Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Page, Elden Henson as Foggy Nelson, Ayelet Zurer as Vanessa Fisk, and Wilson Bethel as Benjamin Poindexter/Bullseye — all of whom were officially cast as part of the season 1 refresh, though talks of their reprisals preceded that shift. Their presence confirms that, yes, all that history officially stands, and Murdock and Fisk are its anchors.
On a wall display in Cox's home is a framed black-and-white illustration of Daredevil from page 1 of the first issue of 2004's comic book miniseries Daredevil: Father, written and drawn by Joe Quesada. Quesada gifted this piece to Cox on the first day of production on the Netflix series back in the summer of 2014. It came with a written message: "Charlie, may the Man Without Fear change your life as much as he has changed mine."
"I can look at that now and comfortably say that this character has changed my life as much as he changed Joe Quesada's," Cox acknowledges.
Like Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark or Chris Evans' Steve Rogers, Cox and D'Onofrio are inextricably linked to their characters. Even the top Marvel brass didn't see a way forward for this corner of the franchise without these two acting titans. Executive producer Sana Amanat, fresh off of Ms. Marvel, remembers a comment from Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige: "We just have to make sure it's Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio, whatever we do with Daredevil."
It took some time to work out those plans, given the Netflix shows were canceled as Marvel refocused its resources to launch their own in-house series on the newly formed Disney+ streaming platform. But, eventually, Cox received a call from the man himself. "I had let go of [returning to Daredevil] entirely by the time I got a phone call from Kevin Feige in June of 2020," Cox says. "Over two years had passed since the show had come out. It was 100 percent dead and buried for me." There was no talk of a Daredevil TV show at the time, just two guest appearances: a cameo as Peter Parker's lawyer in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), followed by a return appearance in Disney+ series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022).
But those cameos "certainly got my imagination going," Winderbaum admits. Another series, focusing on Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and his new arrow-slinging protégé Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), was mostly developed — but "there was a piece to fill," Winderbaum notes. And he suggested they fill it with Fisk.
On a wall display in Cox's home is a framed black-and-white illustration of Daredevil from page 1 of the first issue of 2004's comic book miniseries Daredevil: Father, written and drawn by Joe Quesada. Quesada gifted this piece to Cox on the first day of production on the Netflix series back in the summer of 2014. It came with a written message: "Charlie, may the Man Without Fear change your life as much as he has changed mine."
"I can look at that now and comfortably say that this character has changed my life as much as he changed Joe Quesada's," Cox acknowledges.
Like Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark or Chris Evans' Steve Rogers, Cox and D'Onofrio are inextricably linked to their characters. Even the top Marvel brass didn't see a way forward for this corner of the franchise without these two acting titans. Executive producer Sana Amanat, fresh off of Ms. Marvel, remembers a comment from Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige: "We just have to make sure it's Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio, whatever we do with Daredevil."
It took some time to work out those plans, given the Netflix shows were canceled as Marvel refocused its resources to launch their own in-house series on the newly formed Disney+ streaming platform. But, eventually, Cox received a call from the man himself. "I had let go of [returning to Daredevil] entirely by the time I got a phone call from Kevin Feige in June of 2020," Cox says. "Over two years had passed since the show had come out. It was 100 percent dead and buried for me." There was no talk of a Daredevil TV show at the time, just two guest appearances: a cameo as Peter Parker's lawyer in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), followed by a return appearance in Disney+ series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022).
But those cameos "certainly got my imagination going," Winderbaum admits. Another series, focusing on Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and his new arrow-slinging protégé Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), was mostly developed — but "there was a piece to fill," Winderbaum notes. And he suggested they fill it with Fisk.
Multiple appearances later (including Marvel's 2004 standalone Echo series), the two firmly take the reins of a new era for the characters in Daredevil: Born Again, set some time after the events of Netflix's Daredevil season 3. These two men and archenemies are not who they used to be… Those who watched the original Daredevil will remember how vigilant Matt was in not taking a life in the line of duty. Is that why he's packed away his cowl and thrown himself into his legal work? "It's not entirely accurate, but it's a fair connection," Cox teases.
Similarly, Fisk has left behind his criminal empire — which his wife, Vanessa, ran while he served a prison sentence. Born Again leans fully into the Mayor Fisk storyline from the comics, with the Kingpin now chasing a different seat of power. And without Hell's Kitchen's chief villain and hero (no offense to Spidey and friends), other figures rise up to fill that void. "The only thing that's on his mind in season 1 is to gather control and to do what he needs to get done with that control," D'Onofrio says of where we now find Fisk. "That's going to expand and reach further and further. He's completely broken in life in every other way, except he has this one engine that never stops running."
"Both of them [carry] dark passengers inside of them," Scardapane explains. "They're both wearing masks as they move through this story. Daredevil is wearing a Matt Murdock mask and Kingpin is wearing a Wilson Fisk mask. That was one of the things that we really wanted to underscore…these two characters push each other's buttons in such ways that it releases those dark passengers."
Behind the scenes, there was a lot of anticipation for their initial sequence together — a meeting of Murdock and Fisk in a Manhattan diner. It's their first confrontation since the events of the OG series and, rather than try to out-alpha the other, they finally have an open conversation, perhaps for the first time with anyone in their entire lives. The stars don't share the screen together too often throughout this season of Born Again, which only adds more gravitas to the moments when they do. "Whenever they're in a room together, it's electric with both history and menace," Scardapane comments. "I think that comes from this being a pair of characters that have been bouncing off each other and working together for a long time."
In rehearsing the scene, directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (Loki) came to a realization that cracked the dynamic. "These two people are probably more enamored with each other than they are with anyone else in their entire lives, and they never get to spend any time on screen together, but they're obsessed with each other," Benson says. "They have a warmth towards each other because they give each other purpose."
Behind the scenes, there was a lot of anticipation for their initial sequence together — a meeting of Murdock and Fisk in a Manhattan diner. It's their first confrontation since the events of the OG series and, rather than try to out-alpha the other, they finally have an open conversation, perhaps for the first time with anyone in their entire lives. The stars don't share the screen together too often throughout this season of Born Again, which only adds more gravitas to the moments when they do. "Whenever they're in a room together, it's electric with both history and menace," Scardapane comments. "I think that comes from this being a pair of characters that have been bouncing off each other and working together for a long time."
In rehearsing the scene, directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (Loki) came to a realization that cracked the dynamic. "These two people are probably more enamored with each other than they are with anyone else in their entire lives, and they never get to spend any time on screen together, but they're obsessed with each other," Benson says. "They have a warmth towards each other because they give each other purpose."
Woll and Henson's returns as Karen and Foggy, two of Matt's closest friends and associates, were key additions. The characters weren't completely ignored in the initial treatment, but, as Amanat phrases it, "We just hadn't found a place to tell their story." Cox further remembers, "We were talking about some cool stuff further down the line with those characters, but we weren't really acknowledging where they were in the world." Not so now.
Woll initially found just the idea of her surprise comeback tricky to navigate. "Sometimes when you've been away from a role for a while and you return to it, it can feel a bit like you're doing an impression of yourself," the True Blood alum explains of her experience. "I was worried about that, but I think because the three of us have such an easy give-and-take, that allowed it to be very natural and fall right into place."
The first scenes Woll, Henson, and Cox shot together as a trio were well documented. Paparazzi captured them in character walking out of an office building for Nelson, Murdock, Page: Attorneys at Law, fulfilling those characters' dreams of starting their own firm at the end of the original series. The paps captured them again shooting on the street in front of Josie's, their favorite after-hours watering hole.
"They hadn't been there, and that felt painful and odd," Cox recalls. "I'd spoken with them both and told them what I knew and what I understood to be happening, but for them to then be on set, walking down the street, reminiscing over the past in the scene as well as behind the scenes, it was quite emotional. We were in Hell's Kitchen, which was bizarre. We didn't really shoot in Hell's Kitchen previously. But we actually happened to be coming out of a storefront and there were lots of fans on the street. It was healing."
Woll recalls the three of them sitting inside a running store, with only the building's exterior used for a specific scene. "We're just looking at each other," she says of that day. "We're like, 'Guys! We're back. We're here again. Can you believe it?' I don't know, just the joy, the absolute joy…" She lets out the nostalgic type of sigh that signals a full heart. "I'm having good tinglies just thinking about it."
According to Amanat, the Marvel team brought Karen and Foggy back because they believe them to be the heart of the old show, as well as the heart of Matt. They function best to push him in different ways and force him to confront their shared past. Amanat also pushed to bring back Bethel's Bullseye, who became the prime antagonist of the original’s third season on Netflix. "He just felt like the most appropriate villain to be returning," she remarks of the mentally disturbed army vet who became an assassin for Fisk. The last time fans saw him was on a medical slab getting surgically infused with metal after his last battle with Daredevil. "He was so great in the last season," Amanat says, "and I'm so intrigued by him as a character in general."
Scardapane confirms "the prime villain is always Fisk," but acknowledges "the piling up of villains happens over time." That includes the introduction of Muse, played by a still-undisclosed actor. Marvel Comics gave the nickname Vincent van Gore to this masked artist, who uses human blood to create horrific pieces. If that comic descriptor wasn't enough of an indication, "He is a darker character," Amanat notes. "Those are some dark episodes for sure. I would warn people to be very mindful of any kind of triggers there because Muse is a serial killer. He is not a good guy by any means, but some of the sequences with him are pretty compelling and creepy."
And, of course, there's Punisher. Bernthal's Frank Castle reconnects with Cox's Matt at some point during the first season, which is one of the elements that survived the show's reconfiguration. Much like Cox and D'Onofrio, Bernthal and Scardapane have history; Scardapane executive-produced and wrote on the two seasons of Netflix's The Punisher. "Working with Jon and working with that character is always really intense, really satisfying," the showrunner comments. Many details of Punisher's involvement in the events to come are on a need-to-know basis, but Winderbaum prefaces, "[Matt] goes to Frank because he needs something done that he's unwilling to do. And Frank, a bull in a china shop, drives right to the heart of the matter. As you get later in the season, especially in the culmination, Frank's appearances are just insane."
On the opposite end of the guest-appearance spectrum, you have Yusuf Khan (Mohan Kapur), the father of teen hero Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani). He crosses over from Ms. Marvel for at least one episode. That presence speaks to something Winderbaum loves from the comics, that mixture of tones. He likens Kapur's role to Daredevil popping into the specific fourth-wall-breaking world of She-Hulk. "He's an affable guy, but this is a serious episode with real stakes, and all of a sudden, he's in a different world than he was in Ms. Marvel," he says of the Khan family patriarch.
All hell breaks loose
While season 1 is about to be unleashed on the public, Team Daredevil is already deep into preparation for season 2. Benson and Moorehead sit in their New York City production offices in front of a wall covered in concept renderings that depict various office spaces, and Amanat's own white boards are just as chaotic. Scardapane acknowledges they're a "better-oiled machine" now; no need for triaging this time. "This season is really kind of part 2 of season 1, so it allows us to go into bigger and different places." Serial killer Muse, he notes, is one such "ripple effect that extends beyond" season 1.
What about other elements of Daredevil's history from the Netflix series? Online murmuring abounds as to whether Elektra (played throughout the Netflix era by Elodie Yung) and the shadowy ninja clan the Hand will make comebacks, given how integral both were to that first streaming run. "One-hundred percent it's in the back of our heads. Eventually we'll try to figure out a bit more with that," Amanat says.
And what about the other Defenders? Now that Daredevil and Punisher are firmly back in the Marvel onscreen pantheon, will Krysten Ritter's strongwoman sleuth Jessica Jones, Mike Colter's bullet-proof Luke Cage, and Finn Jones' mystically charged martial artist Iron Fist rejoin the ranks? "I can't say much, but I'll tell you that it's so exciting to be able to play in that sandbox," Winderbaum responds. "Obviously, we don't have the unlimited storytelling resources like a comic book, [where] if you can draw it, you can do it. We're 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."
After a streak of one-off limited Marvel series, Winderbaum's priority is to make shows that last for multiple seasons, getting back to what he calls "comfort viewing reliability." For Daredevil: Born Again, he confirms, "One-hundred percent it's a multi-season show," though, "I don't know how many seasons it'll run."
Cox says he's unaware of any other commitments beyond season 2. He's reluctant to say much more, but admits, "It would be cool for that journey to continue." At the very least, after he survived development hell, Marvel has renewed faith in this devil.
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