Daredevil: Born Again

"I was raised to believe in grace. That we can be touched by the divine and transformed into a better person. So if you say to me that you're a new man, I say 'Fine.' But you should know, I was also raised to believe in retribution. So if you step out of line, I will be there."

It has been seven long years, but Daredevil is back! He has been born again.

Too cheesy? Yeah, I know. Writing these little intro blurbs is hard!

This season review contains spoilers.

Daredevil: Born Again has had a pretty tortured production cycle. I'll give the barebones summary for anyone who hasn't heard it. It was originally announced in 2022 as something completely disconnected from the Netflix series, and it would have 18 episodes. In 2023, the strikes happened. This shut down production, and gave Marvel time to review the six episodes that had already been filmed.

And they hated them.

Okay, hated might be a little strong, but they fired the head writers and brought in Dario Scardapane, who worked on The Punisher, to serve as showrunner. (That Marvel is even using showrunners now is a big change, but that's a whole other thing that is too tangential for this review.) Basically, they brought in a new creative team that completely reset the tone and made the series into a direct continuation of the Netflix one. They wrote three new episodes, added new scenes to the ones already filmed, and generally reframed things. The season was split into two: nine episodes now and eight episodes in season two.

So where does that leave us?

If you're thinking "a disjointed season with a final episode that feels more like a mid-season finale than an actual ending," congratulations! You would be right.

Still, it's only disjointed in hindsight. The new episodes were one, eight, and nine. So it really wasn't until the end that I realized just how different the middle set had been in not only plot, but tone and general philosophy.

The middle is where you get most of your connections to the wider MCU. It's where we see Jack Duquesne, aka The Swordsman, pop up again. It's where we see Yusuf Khan, aka Ms. Marvel's dad, as an assistant bank manager denying Matt a loan, and then working with him when bank robbers take everyone hostage. And it's a lot of fun.

I really enjoyed that bank episode in particular. Was it completely disconnected from everything else, and was there probably a better use of that time? Sure. But sometimes you need "filler" episodes, and this one was well done. It was a joy to watch Matt in a situation where "the blind lawyer" is so clearly a mask.

Plus I love a good Saint Patrick's Day episode.

The middle is also where you get White Tiger and Muse. I'm not as familiar with Daredevil comics as I am with some other characters, so I fully expected Hector Ayala to be a major character. And I was very excited for that. I was immediately drawn into him, and I was really looking forward to actually seeing him in action.

His execution was a shock, but in a good way. It felt like it would be the jolt to really kick the season into high gear... except that didn't really happen. That momentum never translated.

So then we had Muse, and he was incredibly creepy. I loved how his art work would appear throughout the various episodes. I loved his mask. They were doing a very good job at letting that smolder in the background until it was time for him to step out on to center stage... except then he was basically immediately dispatched with, and in kind of a lame way, too.

He just ended up feeling wasted as a character, and I wish that we had gotten more build up to the fact that he was so obsessed with Heather, Matt's new therapist girlfriend. Also, I'm sorry, but the fact that Matt could run his hand over Muse's art and immediately tell that he was drawing her over and over again was just ridiculous. And he wasn't even wearing gloves! It's called fingerprints, Matt! You're a lawyer! You know this!

So the mini-arcs ended up falling flat, but what about the stuff that stretched the entire season?

Matt and Fisk rarely shared the screen, but their relationship still was the dramatic center of everything. In episode one, "Heaven's Half Hour," they sit across from each other at a diner and swear that they've changed. Been reformed. Matt is now solely a lawyer. Fisk is now solely a good man who wants to be Mayor because the loves the city so much and wants to make it better. And they both warn each other, that the second they slip back into old habits, they will be there to punish the infraction appropriately.

And then tension comes because, at least in episode one, both men truly want to be a changed man, and they want the same for the other one as well. Neither of them are in an environment conducive to that, though. What can Matt do when he proves his client innocent of murder, just for him to be murdered that same night? How can Fisk reform the city when his days are tangled up in red tape and the moneyed elite just laughs at his grand ideas?

It's not sustainable. Everyone knows that it's not sustainable, and it's almost a relief when they both stop pretending. It should go without saying that both Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio are magnificent. They both do a ton of heavy lifting, and I don't think that I realized just how much they were carrying things until we got into episodes eight and nine.

There are a lot of new characters. After Foggy is killed in the standout opening scene, Karen moves across the country. We have the aforementioned girlfriend, Dr. Heather Glenn, who is in the unenviable role of appearing ignorant and unreasonable because she doesn't have access to the same information that the audience does, like the fact that her boyfriend is Daredevil and his conspiracy theories about the Fisks are true.

There's Cherry, a retired cop who... yeah, that's basically all we know about him. Kirsten is Matt's new law partner, and spends most of the season annoyed at Matt. Buck is Fisk's new Wesley, down to the suits and the hair. There are a bunch of corrupt cops who get Punisher tattoos, and have very punchable faces.

Basically, there are a bunch of characters that are just fine. They're not bad, but they aren't really anything special either. I am admittedly a little curious with where they'll go with a few of them next season, namely the power struggle between Daniel and Sheila within the Fisk administration. Daniel grated on me at first, but I'm now enjoying the Penguin vibes he's giving off. I also hope that we build on BB's semi-undercover work there as well.

But all of these new characters pale in comparison to the old guard. There's just no comparing the chemistry. It crackles. It wakes everything up. I've already praised Cox and D'Onofrio, but Jon Bernthal has not missed a step as Frank Castle. If anything, he's gotten even better. He's only in two episodes, but I wish that he was in all of them. I was also incredibly pleased to see Frank and Karen interact again, along with confirmation that there is something lingering between them. Of course, there's a lot lingering between her and Matt too, so that should be fun to watch everyone navigate next season.

I'm looking forward to a lot of things next season, but it's more due to the fact that this creative team will actually get a full season to play with as opposed to anything that happened this season, and that's kind of a tricky spot to be in. As amazing as I found the last two episodes to be, it ran into the exact problem that I had with the latest season of Squid Game. It didn't feel like anything actually ended or came to a resolution. We just hit pause.

Fisk won. He's in complete control of New York City and has fully re-embraced his identity as Kingpin. His marriage is stronger than ever. Our heroes are either dead, locked up in a cage (at least until the mid-credits scene), or heavily injured. It's an Empire Strikes Back kind of ending, which I have never particularly liked.

But if we get a full season of episodes just like the last two, then I really won't have any room to complain. Daredevil is back. Now here's hoping they bring Jessica Jones and Luke Cage back, too!

Random Thoughts

Rest in Peace Kamar de los Reyes, who died of cancer in 2023.

I haven't watched the Netflix series in years, and I'm pretty sure that I never saw the third season. I was definitely missing context, like who Bullseye was in general, but it was easy enough to pick up on the important things.

As far as violence, it was definitely still there! Special shoutout to the head crush in episode nine. They actually showed it off in full lighting, and it was on screen for several seconds too. I always love it when they give me time to actually appreciate the effect.

I really liked the BB Reports. As someone who grew up in the New York area, it felt and looked like they were actually talking to real New Yorkers.

They did use CGI in spots to make Daredevil more acrobatic. I thought that it was very distracting.

Season two is currently slated to be released in March 2026.

We are also apparently supposed to get a Special Presentation for the Punisher in 2026 as well. I am very, very excited for that.

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An Honest Fangirl loves video games, horror movies, and superheroes, and occasionally manages to put words together in a coherent and pleasing manner.

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