‘Daredevil: Born Again’ season two review: A more confident, yet still uneven new chapter for Marvel’s street-level hero
The second season of Marvel Studios’ gritty continuation of the Daredevil story sticks the landing, but it’s still conflicted in its narrative focus.
To say that the path travelled by Daredevil: Born Again to reach its second instalment is tumultuous would be a massive understatement. The rights to Matt Murdock and the other ‘street-level’ heroes were obtained by Marvel Studios after the failure of the 2003 Daredevil film and its 2005 spinoff Elektra, both of which rejected the gritty tone of Frank Miller’s interpretation of the character for unabashed, overpolished goofiness.
Instead of rebooting Daredevil for the big screen, Marvel developed a TV series that cast Charlie Cox as an established crime-fighter and lawyer, who transformed into the ‘Devil of Hell’s Kitchen’ in order to take down the ruthless criminal mastermind Wilson Fisk, played by Vincent D’Onofrio, and since it aired on Netflix and not on network television like ABC (which debuted other Marvel shows like Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter), it was allowed to be as gruesome as possible.
Daredevil retained a consistent level of quality across three seasons and was enveloped in the broader universe of other Marvel Netflix shows, including Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, The Punisher, Iron Fist, and the crossover series The Defenders. However, the announcement of Disney+ as a new streaming service ensured that none of Marvel’s content was on rival platforms, leading to the premature termination of all of its Netflix programmes, including Daredevil. Although there was a strong lobbying to fold Daredevil into the MCU more directly, evidence of an actual effort on Kevin Feige’s part didn’t become apparent until Cox reprised his role for a brief cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
The announcement of a new Disney+ series, Daredevil: Born Again, was initially exciting, but warning signs began to emerge when the original showrunners were fired halfway through production and a creative overhaul was ordered. It was to be a more traditional reboot that brought over cast members like Cox and D’Onofrio, but essentially started their arcs from scratch, and although Daredevil: Born Again was salvaged into a mostly entertaining season of television, it still had the feel of a Frankensteined project that was caught between conflicting creative visions.
The show had the benefit of a smooth production and a guaranteed renewal for season three, but at this point, the messiness is just part of the character. The Netflix show had balanced Matt’s life as a public defender and a masked vigilante into a poignant character study, but Born Again has the backdrop of an all-out war between the New York government and superheroes. In events that seemingly aren’t acknowledged by any other MCU project, the newly elected Mayor Fisk has created an initiative to occupy the ‘Big Apple’ with his aggressive Anti-Vigilante Task Force, composed of corrupt cops with an aptitude for aggression.
Even though the stakes are higher than ever, the show is still running in circles; that Matt and Disk will never kill each other is what makes their dynamic compelling, but it also ensures that the series will always be stuck with the same status quo. Season two’s best decision is to shift away from the unshakeable methodologies of its two leads to become an operatic epic about the battle for New York’s soul. The political metaphors aren’t exactly nuanced, but 2026 has proven to be a time in which subtly is extinct. In an era where superhero films are failing harder than ever before, it is somewhat inspiring to see how well Cox has grown into the role and how his Daredevil seems to actually have a desire to do good.
Although making the entire city of New York a hostile battleground does limit the stakes of what season two can accomplish before its big climax, there are enough interesting side characters to ensure that it works on a week-to-week basis. One of the biggest standouts from the original Netflix run was Wilson Bethel as Benjamin ‘Dex’ Poindexter, who is given an interesting role as a violent mercenary whose morality falls somewhere in between Fisk and Matt. The romance between the reporter BB Urich, played by Genneya Walton and the Deputy Mayor Daniel Blake, played by Michael Gandolfini, has weight this time around, mostly because the interiority of New York’s relationship with the broader MCU is better fleshed out.
Daredevil: Born Again still hasn’t figured out what to do with the marriage between Fisk and Ayelet Zurer’s Vanessa, mostly because D’Onofrio’s characterisation is either one of conniving menace or exaggerated brute strength, depending on what the plot calls for. Deborah Ann Woll is also given little to do as Karen Page, as she’s better suited to team-ups with Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle, who traded an appearance in the season for his own standalone spinoff, The Punisher: One Last Kill. On a brighter note, Born Again did introduce some compelling new antagonists in Arty Froushan as the ruthless fixer Buck Cashman and Matthew Lillard as the eccentric spook Mr Charles.
The finale of season two is a barrage of action that features far better fight choreography than the CGI-laden previous season, and culminatates to a point that will hopefully lead the series in a more unique direction in its next year. Daredevil: Born Again might never reach the heights of its predecessor, but season two proves that it’s light-years ahead of almost of everything else the MCU has churned out in the Disney+ era.
