What do Wanda and Daredevil have in common? They both wear red and lack vision.
It’s an oldie but a goodie!
As chosen by you guys on Twitter, the first topic we’re gonna be tackling this week from comic-con is Daredevil Born Again. It’s my most anticipated upcoming project from the phase 5 slate and I can’t wait to see some Cox on screen again like it’s a Friday night on Channel 5.
Wait delete that delete that.
Anyway, throughout this post, we’re gonna be breaking down everything we know about it so far, the cast and the new costume that the character has.
Release Date & Length
During Marvel’s Hall H panel at San Diego Comic-Con, they unveiled a lot of their upcoming movies and shows for both Phase 5 and 6. Daredevil Born Again was dropped into the line-up and because of this, we know a rough release date for it.
The show will be premiering on Disney Plus in Spring 2024 and it’ll be a mammoth kingpin of a season. Clocking in at 18 episodes this will be three times…is that right…6, 12, yeah three times longer than the usual Disney plus show. The typical season on Netflix for the series was 13 episodes so this is going to be even longer than that.
Run Time & Format
Now that doesn’t mean that it’ll actually be longer though as the Netflix entries all clocked in at an hour each and Disney tend to do varying lengths with their longer seasons normally having shorter episodes. For example, your Hawkeyes, and your Ms Marvels, were roughly about 50 minutes long whereas a lot of Wandavision was about 20-30 minutes.
So run times can vary depending on a series length and with this being 18 episodes I can imagine that they might be shorter ones that don’t clock in at an hour. Disney will be dropping the series weekly and Kevin Spoilers is about to be busy for the next year so kids, you’re going off to boarding school.
Now as much as I hate doing lots of episodes at once, with this being 18 I kinda hope that Disney changes up their format a bit and does something similar to Amazon. Prime Video tend to drop the first three episodes of a season and then they follow this with weekly releases.
I think that would work really well in this instance and that would give us a big binge from the off and then get us hooked on the weekly releases.
Cast
Now both Charlie Cox and Vincent D’nofrio are returning to their respective roles. Cox is due to appear in She-Hulk with D’nofrio once more returning as the Kingpin in Echo. So spoiler alert, he survives that show too.
At the end of Hawkeye he ended up getting shot by Echo but if you know the comics then you’ll be well aware that something similar happened. In those Kingpin ended up getting shot too but he went blind instead of dying. I think that they’ll bring him back in this way so that you have him facing off against a deaf Echo in her show before going against a blind Daredevil in his.
Vincent D’nofrio reacted to the announcement the other day simply by saying ‘when I was a boy…’
So yeah, can you, can you be more specific…
Title Meaning
The title Born Again brings a lot with it and for the next part of this, I want to go over that and the costume. Now if you’ve read the book by Frank Miller then you’ll know that Season 3 of Daredevil actually took a lot of elements from it so it’s gonna be interesting to see if they revisit that or make this its own thing. We’re still unsure if it’s all connected to what’s come before but I can imagine that this will be somewhat of a soft reboot with some returning characters but they might redo some plot lines. We also don’t know if the other Daredevil-verse characters will be returning but knowing Disney they’re probably getting The Punisher across, turning him into a guy that makes balloon animals at kids’ parties and calling him the Funisher.
I really hope that they take the mature route with it, get rid of the Hawaiin hats and at least make this as gritty as the Netflix series. If they don’t do that it’s gonna get a lot of negative comparisons but with Marvel Zombies being TV-MA I do have hope that they at least realise that they can start going into adult territories. Deadpool 3 has also been said to be Rated R and for a property like Born Again they’re gonna need to go in that direction.
Comic Story Line
In the comics, we see that Karen Page is a drug addict and in order to get a fix she ends up revealing that Matt Murdock is Daredevil to some Gangsters. So yeah, already off to a bad start. Using this information, The Kingpin systemically destroys Matt Murdock’s life. He destroys his job, his friendships and also his home. Matt doesn’t understand why everything has all of a sudden come crashing down but he realises it’s Kingpin due to his arrogance. Kingpin’s hubris meant that he had to leave a calling card so that Matt knew it was all him and this set him off on a quest for revenge. Matt ended up fighting a guy called Nuke and on top of this he also took down the Kingpin.
This was a big comic at the time because this was an age where the villains and the public never found out a Superhero’s secret identity. I know that the MCU has kinda scrapped that in favour of just revealing everyone but when they’re these kinds of heroes it means way more.
Tony Stark is a billionaire so it doesn’t matter if people know he’s Iron Man but for characters like Daredevil and Spider-man, it renders them unable to have a normal life.
Now though I absolutely love the book and think it’s near perfect, The Nuke storyline was always pretty bad to me and I kinda hope that they swap the character out with someone else.
If you cast your mind back to the ending of Daredevil Season 3 then you’ll remember that Bullseye ended up surviving the series and I think it would be great to get Poindexter back. If Kingpin is blind it also just gives us lots of crap pun opportunities to have someone in the show called Bullseye and he’s also probably my second favourite Daredevil villain.
I just think there’s something so cool about someone who can turn anything into a weapon and use it in a way to kill people with pinpoint accuracy and it would be a great test for Matt Murdock once more.
Who I’d Like To Return
Now on top of this, I hope that we see Deborah Ann Wool return as Karen Page with Elden Henson also coming back as Foggy.
The pair really added a lot of heart to the original series and with the two main leads coming back it makes sense to bring them across too.
This show could also be used as a way to pull across the Defenders and who knows we might even get cameos from Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and yes, even you Iron Fist.
If you cast your mind back to the release of the Matrix Resurrections then you might remember that Jessica Henwick revealed that she didn’t want to star in Shang-Chi because she had hoped Colleen Wing could come back.
I’d love it if she got to return too as she’s by far the best part of that movie and Henwick has also made a big name for herself now.
Costumes
So everyone could come back but we can also get some upgrades too.
This includes costumes and in the brand new She-Hulk trailer, we ended with an appearance from Daredevil confirming that he’s gonna be in the show.
I guess that it’s just a cameo role but that he will help to set up the events of Echo before we get his main series.
Now if you slow down the footage of him jumping in you can see that his costume has lots of yellow elements to it.
This pulls directly from the comics and in those he did have a yellow leotard at points which was based on a boxing outfit.
I always thought that this would look goofy in live-action but that summoofffabich Kevin Feige has pulled it off and it looks great from the small flashes that we get.
They haven’t gone too over the top with it and it still retains a lot of the elements from Netflix but it also has these things that make it more akin to the comics which I rate Marvel for doing.
Anyway, that’s everything we know so far, our theories and also what you need to know about the comic books so you’ve got a bit more of an idea of what to expect in the show.
Born Again is a brilliant book and the creative team has a lot resting on their shoulders with this.
My big hopes are that they don’t neuter it for Disney and that they lean into the darker elements of it. The audience that grew up with the MCU is getting older now too so having this be as mature as the source material would be great for the series I think.
Anyway, that’s your lot and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it so make sure you comment below and let me know.
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