Daredevil: Born Again is Daredevil…again

Six years after Daredevil was cancelled on Netflix, the series is revived on Disney+ as Daredevil: Born Again, a cheeky title, an in-joke for comic book fans and those following this character from Netflix to Disney+. It’s also a promise, though, that the new iteration of Daredevil will at least hold up the quality of the Netflix series, which Born Again mostly does. Charlie Cox returns as blind lawyer Matt Murdock, who moonlights as the vigilante Daredevil. Born Again opens with something of a reunion, as Eldon Henson also returns as Matt’s best friend and partner-in-law, Foggy Nelson, and Deborah Ann Woll is back as super sleuth Karen Page. Keeping the OG cast together is the single best thing about Born Again—the actors were never a problem with the Netflix shows.

But Born Again quickly establishes its own identity. It does keep up MCU continuity, including these specific characters’ pasts from the Netflix series, but Born Again never belabors the point. If you’re Daredevil-curious, it is not hard to get into the swing of things in Born Again, and no, you don’t have to do “homework” for the new series. The premiere episode is written by Dario Scardapane and he does a great job efficiently establishing character relationships and motivations, so that you know by the end of hour one where everyone stands, and what they want.

For Matt, this is more or less the same—he wants to help the people of New York (the series is less neighborhood centric, probably because Hell’s Kitchen is simply too gentrified now to pretend it’s a working class neighborhood any longer), but he’s torn between helping from within the system in his role as a defense attorney—the legal scenes snap, perhaps aided by writer and actual lawyer, David Feige (no relation to Kevin)—or helping from outside the system as the vigilante Daredevil. Matt’s central conflict throughout Born Again “season one”, as this is being billed, is wrangling between his two personas. 

On a parallel track, Matt’s foil is the series co-protagonist, Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin, still played by the excellent Vincent D’Onofrio. Gone are the Hawaiian shirts that showed up in Hawkeye, Fisk is once again a dapper gentleman who prefers achromatic bespoke suiting. He is also now sporting a scar on his eye, one of the very few references made to the events of Hawkeye and Echo. You truly do not need to see the other Marvel streaming shows, or even the old Netflix Daredevil, to roll with Born Again, the new series gives you exactly enough information to move on with the new story. The best thing about Born Again is that it works in its own little sphere.

Fisk is also torn between personas. He’s trying to move on from being known as the Kingpin, a notorious crime boss, and to be legitimized as the mayor of New York City. A few years ago, this would have been a dumb plot point, but now, a convicted felon being elected to high office is something that just happens. It never feels like Born Again is belaboring real-world events, but thanks to timing, they have stumbled into a sort of enhanced relevance—not unlike Captain America: The Winter Soldier once did—as Fisk’s rise to power cannot help but echo Donald Trump’s success in politics. Where the show does lean into the Trump comparisons is in casting Michael Gandolfini as Daniel Blake, a young man excited by Fisk’s “outsider politics” and the possibilities that open up within his administration.

In a Heat-like setup, Matt and Fisk don’t cross paths much, but when they do, it is electrifying. And more, the dual protagonist setup shows how various influences can pull people in similar directions for different reasons. Matt and Fisk both have a stated intent to “save the city”, how they go about doing that is what makes one a hero and the other a villain. Born Again is at its most effective when Matt and Fisk are responding to the same events in their polar opposite ways, and as events around them spiral into greater and greater chaos, until the whole thing starts to look like a Greek tragedy. You get the sense New York would be a lot better off if these two specific people would just move the f-ck away.

There are some elements of Born Again that don’t quite work, though, chief among them the use of the NYPD within the story. They mention the rise of vigilantes/superheroes has caused a sort of identity crisis within the NYPD, leading to a lot of cops quitting, creating an environment where the NYPD is understaffed, which in turn only increases the need for vigilante justice. And Born Again does not shy away from unflattering depictions of police officers; aside from Detective Angie Kim (Ruibo Qian), the vast majority of cops we meet are “bad apples”. The show even touches on the idea of gangs arising within officer ranks—a documented phenomenon—and the way the Punisher symbology has been co-opted by police in real life. 

But Born Again doesn’t really DO anything with any of this, at least in season one. Perhaps season two will land this particular plane—and it will be impressive if they do—but in season one, it’s just a lot of window dressing. The show is more effective in its storytelling when it is focused on the particular problems of Matt and Fisk, Matt with his guilt-ridden identity crisis, and Fisk trying to fix his marriage to the alluring, shady Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer, owning every second she is on screen). When the show zooms out a little on the police stuff, the narrative footing doesn’t feel as sound, a feeling only enhanced when they kick that can down the road to season two. 

Overall, Born Again is a pleasing return to a fun cast of characters and great actors doing some great acting. The reunion of Matt and Fisk, in particular, crackles with the palpable pleasure of Cox and D’Onofrio acting opposite one another again. And the new additions to the cast, like Michael Gandolfini, Margarita Levieva, and Genneya Walton, are welcome breaths of fresh air in the ensemble. 

The action is good, too, not quite as bloody or frequent as the Netflix iteration but Born Again does feel more grown up than the average MCU offering. It also feels like a proper TV show, with episodic arcs, a bottle episode, and a good old-fashioned season-ending cliffhanger. Who knew that all the MCU needed to make their TV shows work was to…make good TV. Daredevil: Born Again is good TV.

Daredevil: Born Again streams exclusively on Disney+, with new episodes every Tuesday.