Daredevil: Cautiously Optimistic
Disney-Marvel's Tentative New Steps
The Decline
You don’t need three paragraphs of context to understand the problems Disney has had with its Marvel brand ever since 2019’s Endgame. They had their bigger-than-Jesus moment, realized they actually COULD do wrong, damaged their legacy, and are now in desperate need of righting the ship.
Characters like Shang-Chi weren’t going to cut the mustard. The Eternals failed to launch, they should have recast Black Panther after Chadwick Boseman’s death, and the utter tone-deafness on Captain Marvel is a case study on burning cash. That’s before we talk about any of the bad Disney+ streaming shows.
All that said, there’s been a sea change and a culture shift in the last year or two. Disney got its gender-neutral nuts kicked in court in Florida over their bad choices there. They lost a protected tax status that they’d enjoyed since the 60s, and their stock price has lost about half its value in the last three years.
In the words of Sam Wilson, they need to “do better.” In 2025, it seems like certain forces deep in the studio machine are starting to understand that.
The Renewal
February’s Captain America: Brave New World is set to break even at the box office, and has a better-than-expected audience score. Most people who saw it thought it was fine, which is a sight better than the last few theatrical releases from Marvel. Excitement for the forthcoming Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four films is a good sign too.
But it’s possible that no property of theirs has more riding on it than the newest streaming show, Daredevil: Born Again. Announced a few years ago, the idea of Disney trying to take over the legacy of the Netflix-era Daredevil show was poorly received by fans. While the show had its flaws, it was handled more earnestly than most of the movies in the MCU, and a high percentage of viewers were satisfied with the end result of the story.
Contrast that with Disney’s handling of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, WandaVision, and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and you can understand viewers’ apprehension about a new Daredevil show—especially with Matt Murdock’s cameos in the latter. No Daredevil fan wanted more Sex and the City-style plots and humor when there was an abundance of source material to draw on, and a hungry audience to satisfy.
Well, the first two episodes dropped a few days ago, and after watching the season premiere, I’ll say that Daredevil: Born Again appears to be headed in the right direction. If reports are to be believed, the show was shot once, nuked by the execs, rewritten, and shot a second time. I can’t imagine what the previous version looked like, but I can tell you that the premiere episode certainly reads like someone who watched a bad show and dropped a metric ton of better ideas into the writers’ room.
Spoiler warning for those who plan to watch the show. Here there be monsters.
No Holds Barred
The first right move they’ve made has to do with continuity: in the era of multiverse storytelling, there were questions as to whether Disney would even acknowledge the story told in the Netflix-era show, especially since Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio) has appeared in shows like Hawkeye and Echo. Compared to his Daredevil character, that version felt like a multiverse variant handled by bad writers. Also he got shot in the face at the end of Hawkeye. I mean…come on.
With a little bit of handwavium, the writers are saying “Screw that, we’re going to pay it some lip service so we can get the right pieces on the board and start moving them around.” So at the start of the show, Matt Murdock has a successful law firm with Foggy Nelson and—for some reason—Karen Page. Maybe she went to law school a few years ago. Who knows. They’re out celebrating at a local bar when Bullseye shows up (from season 3 of the Netflix show) and murders Foggy. We’re treated to a vintage Daredevil hallway fight with no camera breaks, as Daredevil duels Bullseye and ends up throwing him off the roof of a building, hoping to kill him. Murdock finally crosses his line, he’s so distraught over the loss of his friend.
Fast forward a year and Daredevil is no more. Foggy is dead. Karen moved to San Francisco. Matt has a new practice and he’s doing well. He put his vigilante days behind him because the chickens finally came home to roost and it cost someone he loved. Now we check in on Kingpin…
They’re 100% doing Kingpin as Trump
…and again, so far, it works. They mention that he got shot in the face by someone he tried to mentor (Echo). He’s back from whatever he was up to between season 3 of Daredevil and now. New York City is divided in their opinions on him, like they are in all things. Crime runs rampant and there’s an election on for the mayor’s office. Fisk decides to throw his hat in the ring, and against a crowded field, he wins the election.
They don’t come right out and have him use the parlance or mannerisms of Trump, but they’re still using him as a stand-in for Trump, and I’ll say this: they at least used a tactful hand with it. When you see him on stage debating his opponents, he’s frank and blunt, which works for Wilson Fisk. People are either heavily for him or heavily against him. They want him to shake things up, or they think he’s a crook and deserves to be in prison. You could write him exactly the same way in the show even if we didn’t live in the era of Trump, and it would be consistent with the character of the Kingpin.
The question is: even if it rhymes with our reality, does it work in a vacuum? So far, after one episode, the answer is yes.
The Premise Now
With Matt Murdock hanging up the suit and Wilson Fisk assuming the mayor’s office, we’re going to see two different approaches to solving crime in New York City. How quickly will these men regress to their alter egos? Murdock doesn’t have his two best friends from the last three seasons, but he’s got a new girlfriend and a legal partner, so he’s got points of vulnerability. Fisk has the wife that he pursued in the original show, but now their marriage is on the rocks and he knows she’s cheating on him. Daredevil and Kingpin are still in there somewhere. In the coming episodes, we’ll need a villain to appear to test them both.
Content Warning
While the Netflix show would sneak the odd F-bomb in under a character’s breath, the new version doesn’t have any scruples about it. The first episode had three or four. The combat violence is, so far, on par with the old version too.
Can they stick the landing?
We’re only one episode in, and this is still Disney that we’re dealing with. After years of bad productions, dueling with the fans, and abusing the IPs, viewers are right to be hesitant with their enthusiasm.
But the ship can’t get back on course in one single move. It’s going to take a few good productions to get there. All I can say is, after one episode, they’re at least laying the groundwork for it. I’ll report back in the coming weeks and let you know if it all works. See you out there.