When Marvel revoked Daredevil and its accompanying Defenders gallery of rogue heroes and villains, the collective heart of the MCU fandom broke open in a resounding crack. For years, the audience mourned the loss of Netflix’s revered shows – from Daredevil to Jessica Jones and all the way to Punisher.

Daredevil [Credit: Netflix]

In the cameo-infested 2021 MCU film, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Charlie Cox got called in by the Marvel bosses as Matt Murdock was due for an appointment with Tom Holland’s Peter Parker. However, the little taste and sliver of hope that his cameo brought – followed by the divisive appearance in She-Hulk – was enough to spark a revolution at the Marvel TV offices.

Now, Daredevil is literally Born Again at Marvel as the rebooted series brings in all the familiar faces from the Marvel x Netflix era, including the trio of fan-favorite villains – Kingpin, Bullseye, and Punisher.

Daredevil fights his way back to the streets of New York

Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock in Marvel’s Daredevil [Credit: Netflix]

At the tail-end of 2018, the Marvel x Netflix shows were scrapped to make room for the studio’s in-house shows at Disney+. The cancelation marked the end of an era for Marvel as the grittier, darker, bloodier, and moodier shows were replaced by a plethora of sitcom-flavored episodic television.

Despite shows like WandaVision and Moon Knight heralding a new era at Marvel, the fans were not happy with the changes at the grassroots level of the studio. There was an industry-wide feeling that something essential was amiss at the core of Marvel’s television arena and the answer became clear as day when Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio reprised their roles in small cameos across the board.

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The thought became so apparent, in fact, that the head of Marvel TV, Brad Winderbaum almost felt like he stumbled upon an oracular epiphany [via Entertainment Weekly]:

[A revival series] is inevitable. They’re one of the essential rivalries, if not the most essential mirror image of each other that we have. It was never a question in my mind that we would be bringing them back, and that it needed to be Charlie and Vincent.

It helped move the plans along faster when Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige had the same thought, too. By 2023, Daredevil: Born Again was moving ahead with the entire original cast back in their respective roles – a shocking move for a series that not only underwent a reboot but a studio change as well.

Now, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen picks up where Netflix left off, as Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio prepare to unleash hell on the streets of New York.

Vincent D’Onofrio had full faith in Daredevil‘s return

Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock in Daredevil [Credit: Netflix]

Out of the whole Daredevil cast, it was Vincent D’Onofrio who had the most faith in the series’s revival. Surprisingly, the actor revealed to Entertainment Weekly that he was all caught up with the MCU’s entire roster of films and television shows and something struck him as most surprising after Netflix scrapped the series after three seasons of perfectly good television.

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In an interview with the outlet, D’Onofrio claimed:

I’ve seen all of the Marvel stuff since Iron Man. We watched everything. I just couldn’t believe that the guys would do all of that, and do it so well, to skip over something that wasn’t broken. It just seemed like a no-brainer to me.

Charlie Cox, on the other hand, had laid to rest all hopes of ever donning the horned helmet and picking up the Devil’s work as the Man Without Fear.

I had let go of [returning to Daredevil] entirely by the time I got a phone call from Kevin Feige in June of 2020. Over two years had passed since the show had come out. It was 100 percent dead and buried for me.

However, the hopes and prayers of billions of fans all over the globe were answered when Marvel not only revived the series but put the Punisher showrunner Dario Scardapane in charge of the newly overhauled project. The series is now set to appear in 2 parts, with 9 episodes in each season.

Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 premieres on Disney+ on 4 March 2025.
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