It’s the spring semester of senior year of high school, early 2022, and I’m sitting with two of my favorite people. We get into the topic of what shows we’re currently watching, someone mentions Daredevil, and an addiction is born.
The first time I watched the original Netflix series, our little trio binged through all three seasons in the span of a whopping nine days. It was a very bittersweet moment when we realized the show had been cancelled on a pretty bonkers cliffhanger, despite our main crew of characters having a seemingly happy ending. At that point, it had been years since the show had ended and it seemed we were just going to have to serially rewatch and read the comics to feed our shared addiction.
Now, let’s travel in time a little. Picture this: San Diego Comic Con in 2022, it’s time for the Marvel panel and we’re all buzzing in anticipation as Kevin Feige takes the stage. Five years after the original series was cancelled in 2018, Daredevil: Born Again is announced and Matthew Murdock is set to reappear on our screens.
Now, fast forward a little more, it’s March 4, 2025 and at 7pm MST, seven years after cancellation and three years after being announced, the first two episodes of Born Again are released on Disney+, and balance is restored in the force.
This is your one warning that this may contain spoilers for the three seasons of the original Netflix series (if you haven’t seen it yet…I demand you stop reading this and run to Disney+ right now). This review will not have spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again, because it’s still too soon to talk about spoilers contrary to what some may say (looking at you social media community and your spoiler-filled edits and comment sections hours post-release).
Okay, enough chit chat, let’s dive into those first two episodes.
My initial reaction involves a keyboard smash, excited screams and a whole lot of tears. The trailers have looked promising from the beginning and my expectations were what some may call unreasonably high, but damn, did Marvel deliver.
The show comes back with a bang, with fan-favorite characters Foggy Nelson and Karen Page making a comeback alongside our main man Matt and his longtime nemesis, Wilson Fisk. With promises of the return of Frank Castle and a promising new cast of side characters, the opening of the show delivers an exciting introduction and a lot of potential for what’s to come.
We begin with an adorably wholesome moment between everyone’s favorite functionally, dysfunctional trio. At the end of season three, we see Matt, Foggy and Karen in their usual haunt, Josie’s, talking about getting the gang back together, and “Nelson, Murdock, and Page – Attorneys at Law” is born. We see their dream realized, there’s some laughs to be had and smiles all around to kick things off.
The writers then proceed to take your heart right out your chest, stomp all over it, and then hand it back to you to deal with the pain of a truly insane move. In interviews leading up to the release of the show, leading actor Charlie Cox spoke of a decision made in episode one that he was “still not convinced [was] the right thing to do” and that they had to “come back big and bold…make a statement.”
And boy did they ever. No spoilers, but let’s just say I have a lot of choice words for the writers and the cast, starting with “Why, god, why” and a whole lot of blubbering tears.
With that crazy setup established, we can get into the real plot of the show. Matt has left behind Daredevil, a direct opposition to what season three of the Netflix show was. I would say season three Matt Murdock was deep in the depression trenches, going all angsty and abandoning his friends and leaving himself behind in favor of his vigilante alter ego. This Matt has, as a friend put it, gone beyond depression into a state of false security pre- what I can only assume is going to be an epic crash out. Said crash out begins when our favorite psychopath, Wilson Fisk, makes a reappearance running for mayor of New York and wins, despite a wild history of criminal activity. Suddenly, Matt is forced to confront that maybe he and the city of New York aren’t done with Daredevil.
Technically, the show is beautiful. The camera work and lighting throughout the first two episodes was incredibly well done. There’s an incredible moment in the first episode where the camera pulls you into Matt’s head for a moment, as they play with the dimensions of the frame and the depths of the scene to really depict what he’s experiencing in the moment. The use of lighting and color throughout the episodes, particularly in the final moments of episode two, were chilling.
The fight choreography in the original Netflix show is easily one of the best parts of the show. It’s gritty, it’s real, and it’ll make you cringe and flinch. Now, while Born Again is definitely more violent than anything Disney has offered in previous Marvel shows, there was some clear usage of CGI in the fight scenes that was a little disconcerting and, at least for me, created a bit of a disconnect in the scenes, particularly in episode one. The final fight in episode two carried the same nitty-gritty feeling of a classic Daredevil fight, giving me hope that the CGI issues won’t be a recurring problem in the rest of the show.
And, last but certainly not least, the title sequence is indescribably perfect. The original opening music is a staple of the show, and the new score does a wonderful job adding a new twist to the original theme. The visuals of the opening credits with crumbling statues are beautifully crafted and hauntingly symbolic of the story being told.
To wrap up my incoherent raving, I think it would be fair to say Daredevil: Born Again is shaping up to be the best Marvel show that Disney has put out. A worthy return for the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen and Co.—I can’t wait to see what else is to come.