After years of teasing cameos, Marvel’s the Man without Fear is finally back in Daredevil: Born Again, and the Disney+ show’s timing is fearlessly fantastic.
As Donald Trump prepares to address Congress tonight amidst tariffs, a stock market slump and dangerous intranational realignments and anxiety, it is a reminder it has become impossible the past month not to see almost everything through the distorted lens of a convicted felon president’s latest reign of terror and error.
With terms like “resist” and “retribution” employed in the long-awaited and creatively retooled Charlie Cox-led Born Again, the first Daredevil series since 2018 lines up to the real America of 2025 on a number of levels. Certainly, with the City Hall-aspiring Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio) promising five boroughs voters to “keep our streets safe” to grab absolute power to abuse for riches, there is a lot of MAGA here, as well as a lot of creativity and history.
Debuting tonight with two episodes, Born Again is much more Taxi Driver and Goodfellas than the bland MCU series of recent years — with the very noteworthy exception of last year’s Echo. In fact, the nine-episode first season of the series starring Deborah Ann Woll, Elden Henson, Clark Johnson, Wilson Bethel, a great Michael Gandolfini and Ayelet Zurer has a lot of familiar faces.
Yes, there’s a lot in Daredevil: Born Again that we’ve seen before, and the series is clearly linked to the Marvel series from before. There’s a lot of legacy and lore here, but there is also something new and unleashed – which is why Daredevil: Born Again, created by Matt Corman, Chris Ord and Dario Scardapane, may be the best Marvel series since the original Daredevil wrapped on Netflix seven years ago.
Grimy, amoral in the highest offices and ultraviolent in a way Walt Disney probably never envisioned for his Magic Kingdom, Born Again has the same acidic taste and smell on it of our grifter-ravaged nation divided upon itself and increasingly the Free World. That connection grounds Born Again from its Hell’s Kitchen origins to Gracie Mansion and the metropolis’ tunnels and secrets.
In that context, just like that ostentatious 2015 trip down a certain Trump Tower elevator, the “Fisk Can Fix It” candidacy of Kingpin/Wilson Fisk and his “get sh*t done” ethos barely keeps its menace hidden. Which for comic fans and political junkies alike is sheer mana.
No spoilers, and we all know a second season is coming, but the Scardapane-showrun Daredevil: Born Again also kicks ass – literally and figuratively. For one thing, Born Again gets Cox in the suit ASAP and cuts to the chase almost as fast with an assassin’s fatal hand and a cop-bar brawl that truly shoots out the lights.
I said no spoilers, but I will give you one: Although it’s Charlie Cox’s Daredevil’s name in the title, this is very much the Jon Bernthal-portrayed Punisher’s tale too.
Returning to the rooftops of the Big Apple as he did in the original Daredevil and his own two-season show, the bloodthirsty and much emulated in some circles Frank Castle, a role the versatile Bernthal owns now and then, is all the id that runs rampant in an America where militias and cop assaulters get presidential pardons.
No wonder Disney and Marvel have already revealed that a Reinaldo Marcus Green-directed Punisher special is set for their streamer in the future.
So, to paraphrase Wilson Fisk: Daredevil and Punisher, it is absolutely not entirely unpleasant to see you again. Glad you’re sticking around.
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