Close to 7 years after Charlie Cox first hung his cowl up with the MCU is to this version of the character. This is the main course.

Daredevil: Born Again also took its time to percolate, with original plans focused more on a courtroom drama, and less on the superhero stuff, because, famously, there's nothing Marvel fans love more than legal jargon and litigiousness. Mercifully, the courtroom element is somewhat downplayed in the final version, but it's still a rather more measured show than it was on Netflix. And impressively, there aren't any scars and seams where the old footage has been clearly cobbled together with new parts.

Daredevil: Born Again is exactly as it should be, for me, but that doesn't mean it won't raise some eyebrows by how little active superhero stuff happens in it. At times, it feels like a TV legal procedural, but it's all tied together by grand ideas about the nature of violence, vigilantism, and trauma. It's also very heavy in flashes, packed with earnest heart, and punctuated by some of the most bone-crunching violence the MCU has ever seen. After 9 episodes, I have one dominant thought that speaks to the quality of the thing: more, please.

Charlie Cox Can Play Daredevil Forever, As Far As I'm Concerned

(As Long As Vincent D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk Comes With Him)

Much of the pre-release conversation about Born Again has centered on the returns of some of the best-performing actors in all of Marvel adaptation history. Charlie Cox was a brilliant Matt Murdock, and a ferocious Daredevil, with just the right amount of vulnerability to both sides. Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin was and is a force of nature. Jon Bernthal's Punisher a chaotic squall of hate, pain, and violence.

All three are just as good as they were in the Netflix seasons, and Born Again's story allows for a lot more depth. Not with Frank Castle, of course, but that's not really what you want from Punisher. Born Again isn't so much about superheroism and supervillainy as it is about the idea of both. We've long known that the show would retire Murdock, and see Fisk wading into new waters as a legitimate mayoral candidate for New York, but the story is about more than just their seemingly inevitable reversions to type.

Daredevil: Born Again feels like a very meta meditation on human nature: a sort of Shakespearean picture of man's inherent capacity for evil. Both Murdock and Fisk are Born Again's Othello, with internal Iagos threatening to pull them back in. Set against the wider story of Fisk's campaign against vigilantes and masked heroes, that conflict is hugely compelling, and Cox in particular flourishes.

D'Onofrio's performance here is, by design, softer than it's been previously. He is, after all, Mayor Fisk, not Mayor Kingpin. And that comes with notable and subtle differences: he is smaller (early on Murdock comments that he's lost weight and gained muscle), and is shot with less dramatic angles. He is a picture of restraint, so when we get the flashes of the terrifying boxer within, they land with even greater intensity.

Bernthal eats up every moment of every scene he's in (and is used exactly as much as he should be), Wilson Bethel continues his great work as Bullseye, and Ayelet Zurer gets a lot to do as Vanessa. She's probably the most interesting character outside of Murdock and Fisk.

How The New Cast Stack Up In Daredevil: Born Again

They're So Good You'll Just About Get Over The Older Faces Who Don't Play A Part

Obviously, alongside all the returning Daredevil cast, there are new characters. Margarita Levieva's Heather Glenn is the most prominent of the new class, and is very good, offering both balance and conflict to Matt. It's difficult to say a lot more about her without spoiling things I'm not willing to spoil, but she's excellent and weaves a thread between different storylines in a very clever way.

Clark Johnson is equally good as Matt's new colleague and sort of moral anchor Cherry; Nikki M James is solid as another new colleague (but is somewhat sidelined purposefully); Arty Froushan is very good as Wilson Fisk's new sidekick Buck Cashman (in the comics, known as Bullet), and Michael Gandolfini is a surprising revelation as Fisk's political minion Daniel Blake. If you're a fan of the current political hellfest that dominates real life away from superheroes, you'll see exactly what he's doing with his character, and he does it very well.

The actor who plays new villain Muse (another very good new addition), is almost Fincher-esque in his performance, and Kamar de los Reyes is excellent as New York vigilante Hector Ayala/White Tiger. That we won't get to see more of him in other things after his tragic death is a boundless tragedy. And a special note must go to the stand-out ing actor Cillian O'Sullivan, who appears once and has the most fun I've ever seen from a minor MCU villain.

Marvel Television Delivers On That Big Promise In Born Again

Sometimes, Behind-The-Scenes "Turmoil" Is Good For The End Results

Some time ago, Marvel promised that their approach to TV was going to change. If Daredevil: Born Again is anything to go by, this brave new world is one to be excited about. Previous shows have been presented as mini-series, in effect: 6 to 10 episode bubbles that were both self-contained and also spoke to the agenda to build on the MCU's wider lore. Born Again, somehow, manages to avoid the weight of lore, by focusing chiefly on its own story.

Sure, there are cameos and allusions to the broader MCU in places, but the most important stories are the ones either seeded in Netflix's first three seasons, or established in Born Again itself. And on the latter point, by the time the incredible final episode ended, I was faced with a curiously unfamiliar feeling with an MCU show: I didn't feel compelled to question what the next MCU thing was, and where to move on to - instead, Born Again sets up the even more exciting prospect of its own next season.

This is quality television in the same way HBO's excellent The Penguin was in 2024: the story-telling ebbs and flows, with enough throttle and enough restraint at just the right points to give characters and ideas the right time to develop. Again, this shouldn't be partiuclarly innovative, but it's certainly not characteristics of the MCU's shows, but at no point during Born Again do you question why it wasn't just a movie.

The overall tone avoids being exhaustingly grim dark, despite this probably being the most emo the MCU has ever been, and there are also brilliant observations in the small details that lighten things. There's no insistent, distracting MCU humor here, but touches like the segue between the Newton Brothers' tense score and a disarmingly funny musak version of Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly" at one important point are confident and delightful. In fact, almost all of the needle drops are great.

Final Thoughts On Daredevil: Born Again

Daredevil: Born Again Avoids The Biggest Netflix Mistake

Netflix's biggest mistake with Daredevil - and indeed each of the Defenders shows - was bloating them to justify 13 episode season runs. That meant a quite comically obvious mid-season dip that put the ice on the main storylines. Born Again is just 9 episodes, and each one justifies itself. There is, arguably, only one episode that feels different (episode 5 is a sort of bottle episode and runs shorter than the rest), but Disney+ is releasing it back-to-back with episode 6, and the ideas explored in both of them make the strange release choice perfectly logical.

There is no filler, but also no hint that more exciting things have been bolted on to appease disgruntled test audiences or a studio hungry for more references to The Product. As already mentioned, one of the most impressive things to note about Born Again is that it doesn't feel like a cut and shut: honestly, I'd struggle to pick out the reshoots and additions with quite the same gleeful snark as some do in these cases. And that's the best testament to the decision to change Born Again in such a reportedly wholesale manner.

There are some perhaps questionable CGI moments, but they're brief enough to be forgivable, and I do think Kingpin being sidelined on purpose comes a little at the cost of the character, but these are small complaints. And Kingpin's development throughout the season justifies it. So there's not a lot here to complain about. Is it the best the MCU has ever been? Hyperbole's a trap, but I honestly can't think of much I've enjoyed more than this.

Frankly, I'm annoyed I have to wait another year for Daredevil: Born Again season 2. That's how good it is. It's clever enough to pull its punches, bold enough to deliver huge blows, and packed with enough "holy sh*t" moments that fans of the original - and fans of good TV - will be delighted with it. I'm already sick of people saying "Marvel is back" any time anything above 3 stars comes out, but seriously, if another round of that hyperbole kicks off on the back of Daredevil: Born Again, I might actually be tempted to in.