There aren’t many Marvel projects in development as hotly anticipated as Daredevil: Born Again. Coming off Charlie Cox’s return as Matt Murdock in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Vincent D’Onofrio’s surprise appearance as Wilson Fisk in Hawkeye, the series promises to deliver the Daredevil Disney+ adventure that Marvel Cinematic Universe fans have been waiting to see.
However, with both Cox and D’Onofrio set to reprise their Daredevil roles in Born Again, fans have spent months wondering if the new show is a continuation of Netflix’s Daredevil, or a soft reboot of the series. Now it looks like fans may have finally gotten the answer courtesy of Cox himself.
A Fresh Start — Following his appearance at Marvel Studios’ D23 presentation, Charlie Cox spoke about Daredevil: Born Again with several outlets. While Cox was quick to note that he hasn’t yet read any of the scripts for the 18-episode Disney+ series, he did tell Extra that he doesn’t expect Born Again to be a straightforward continuation of his Netflix show.
“My feeling is, based on the title, Born Again, I think that the sense is it’s gonna be a new beginning, it’s going to be different. It’s going to be tonally different,” Cox said. “It’s going to be new stories, and new ideas.” The actor also said, “Like Kevin [Feige] said, it’s a Season 1, it’s not Season 4, so it’s a whole new thing. Which is, I think, the right way to go. If you are going to do it again, let’s do it differently.”
While unsurprising, Cox’s comments will disappoint many Daredevil fans.
New Stories to Tell — Ever since Cox returned as Matt Murdock in Spider-Man: No Way Home, comic book fans have wondered how Marvel plans to handle Daredevil’s canonical place in the MCU. When it was on the air the series was, like the rest of Netflix’s Marvel shows, very loosely set in the MCU. Once Marvel kicked off its ongoing wave of Disney+ originals, however, the status of all of the MCU’s previous TV shows was thrown into question.
Last year, Hawkeye offered a slightly different interpretation of D’Onofrio’s Kingpin than the one fans came to know in Daredevil, which led fans to believe that Marvel will retroactively place the Netflix series in a different reality than the MCU’s prime timeline. Now, even though Cox’s comments don’t go so far as to actually confirm that theory, they do heavily imply that Daredevil: Born Again is being treated by Marvel as a soft reboot of Daredevil.
The Inverse Analysis — While Hawkeye introduced a different version of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin, the version of Cox’s Matt Murdock that appears in Spider-Man: No Way Home seems similar to the one he played in Daredevil. Even the more lighthearted take on Cox’s Murdock that She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is set to present doesn’t seem too different from the character that Daredevil explored.
While it won’t be as connected to its predecessor as fans had hoped, there’s no reason to believe that Daredevil: Born Again won’t be the satisfying follow-up to Netflix’s Daredevil that fans have been waiting for. That’s assuming, of course, that Marvel plans to bring more back from Daredevil than just Cox and D’Onofrio, which unfortunately remains unclear.
Daredevil: Born Again is set to premiere on Disney+ in spring 2024.
