Daredevil: Born Again Is Trying To Avoid A Fatal Flaw
Daredevil and Kingpin are going even “further in the darkness, the action, the nastiness.”
Daredevil fans breathed a collective sigh of relief when the first trailer for Daredevil: Born Again debuted. The revival series has gone through plenty of growing pains in the past two years, but our first look at the Disney+ show seemed to put most fears to rest. Many wondered if the title vigilante’s adventures would be portrayed with the same darkness — and feature the same violence — as Netflix’s Daredevil. If the blood and broken bones displayed in the preview are any indication, though, showrunner Dario Scardapane (who previously helmed Netflix’s The Punisher) is working hard to keep the soul of the “Defenders” universe alive.
Maintaining Daredevil’s trademark tone is the bare minimum for making this revival work. Scardapane seems to understand that, having recently told Empire that Born Again will go “way past anything Netflix ever did,” teasing an even darker and brutal return for the Man Without Fear. “The level of violence is way up there for a Marvel/Disney show,” Scardapane said. “I don’t think there’s anything else even in the ballpark.”
Per Vincent D’Onofrio, who plays Daredevil’s arch-nemesis, Wilson Fisk, Born Again is more than a continuation of Netflix’s Daredevil. “There’s a world in which you might think that if that show kept running, we’d be in this place eventually, or something like it,” D’Onofrio told Empire. Born Again takes place after a five-year time jump, the same amount of time that’s passed in real life. According to D’Onofrio, Born Again uses this skip to go even “further in the darkness, the action, the nastiness,” particularly where Fisk’s relationship with Daredevil is concerned.
Born Again will go “way past anything Netflix ever did” where Daredevil and Fisk are concerned.
Daredevil was always on the dark side, but Born Again will apparently take it one step further. That will manifest primarily in the dynamic between Fisk’s Kingpin and Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), Daredevil’s alter ego. The trailer reintroduces the duo amid an intense reunion: Fisk has put his criminal past behind him to become mayor of New York City, while Matt has reinvested in his career as a public defender. Born Again may see them striking a fragile truce to clean up the city, but knowing Fisk’s past deeds, Matt will likely have to suit up as Daredevil to thwart him once more.
This upcoming rematch has a “here we go again” quality going for it, given how often Daredevil and Kingpin have done this dance before. It’s a cycle that Scardapane is aware of, and is determined to avoid in the revival:
“If you look at how it ends almost every season, they punch the shit out of each other, Kingpin goes to jail, we know he’s gonna come back. I didn’t want to do that. This dynamic is way more tense. There’s one scene between them in the first episode that lays it all out. Then we spend the next eight episodes throwing rocks at it.”
Daredevil’s relationships in Born Again will hopefully be more complex than in typical Marvel fare.
Scardapane is likely referring to that cordial meeting in the diner, where Fisk admits that seeing Matt again is “not entirely unpleasant.” The rest of the season seems poised to subvert that scene in as many ways as possible as it dials the conflict between these characters back up. Born Again will likely weave a tangled web with other familiar antagonists: Jon Berthnal’s Punisher, Wilson Bethel’s Bullseye, and Fisk’s wife Vanessa (Ayelet Zuror) will all return. There’s also the addition of the White Tiger (Kamar de los Reyes), meaning Daredevil will have his hands full with more than just Kingpin’s ascendancy. Whatever happens, we can hope the new series builds on the foundation of the Netflix series, rather than repeating the same old story.
