Marvel's 'Daredevil' Season 2: Here's What We Know

Marvel’s Daredevil returns Thursday for its second season . The Netflix-exclusive show, based on the blind street crusader of Hell’s Kitchen, is reintroducing a few tenets from Marvel’s mythology into the larger cinematic universe. But what else can we expect when we start binge-watching? A few things.

A faster pace

During a set visit from Entertainment Weekly the new season’s showrunners Doug Petrie and Marco Ramirez vowed to “retain what fans loved about the first year while also flooring the narrative accelerator.”

The showrunners also explained there isn’t much need to build ultra-specific tension. “The advantage of any sequel is you can dive right in,” Petrie told EW. “We hit the ground running and then we ran as fast as we fucking could.”

A truly scary and amazing Punisher

Jon Bernthal is inspired casting for Frank Castle, better known as the Punisher, the gun-toting vigilante with a mean streak. Though he’s been portrayed many times before, Bernthal (best known for his time on The Walking Dead) brings a new dimension to Castle.

“Viewers watching the show will be rooting for this guy with a gun but we’re also going to force people — the way we force Matt — to second-guess themselves,” Petrie told EW.

“Taking lethal justice into your own hands in America in 2015 is tricky s–t. We have not shied away from the rich complicated reality of Now. If you’ve got a gun and you’re not the police you’re going to incite strong feelings. We’re stirring the pot and we’re aware of the headlines where we live and we’re trying to get people to think.”

A short while ago I spoke to John Paeseano, the show’s composer, who had nothing but praise for Bernthal’s Punisher:

“This role is custom made for him. When I look at [Bernthal] now on anything else, all I see is The Punisher,” he told me over the phone. “I remember watching Sicario after Season 2 was more than halfway through, and I couldn’t even get into him in that role because he just is so good, you just don’t want to see him as anything else.”

Elektra “is a sociopath”

Unlike previous Elektras, Elodie Yung’s interpretation of the female ninja is less straightforward.

“We think Elektra is a sociopath,” she told Collider. “She’ll use anything she needs to use to get to her goal, and if she needs to kill people, she will. She has this coldness in her, and I tried to keep that. But on the other hand, we wanted to create a character with different layers. I think Elektra isn’t a bad person, but she’s not a good person.”

‘Daredevil’ is still about Hell’s Kitchen, not the whole MCU

In the same interview with Collider both Petrie and Ramirez explain how Daredevil stays within its own world, even if the events in The Avengers and the MCU aren’t so far away.

Petrie: “We also want to keep it in Hell’s Kitchen. The example that we used a lot is that the air conditioner doesn’t work at Nelson and Murdock. That’s really what we’re interested in. New York is a city that has a larger than life presence. There are celebrities that live there. There are baseball stars that live there. They walk the streets. They’re everywhere. If you see Derek Jeter walking down the street, that’s great, but then you turn the corner and you get into an argument with the guy who overcharged you for a pretzel. We want our guys to be real New Yorkers.”

Ramirez: “It never feels like, ‘Oh, they’re leading to this super obvious connective tissue,’ or ‘Now they’re in the garage of Stark Enterprises for no reason.’ Our characters are so interesting, we don’t have to exist in that shadow, in order for them to be interesting. Those little Easter eggs that come along the way are fun, but there have been times when we had the opportunity and we thought, No, we shouldn’t do it. This is too distraction. It’s not the right time for that.”

A Luke Cage cameo?

Daredevil is only one part of a larger tapestry: The Defenders, which will feature Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist.

Rosario Dawson’s Claire, introduced in Daredevil, made a guest appearance on Jessica Jones — and it seems that synergy will continue, with a possible cameo from Mike Coulter’s Luke Cage in Season 2 of Daredevil, teased by a video tweet posted in November.

Maybe it’s something, maybe it’s nothing, or maybe it was just promotion for Jessica Jones. Or maybe we’re that much closer to the anticipated crossover, The Defenders.