Daredevil is back to beat up bad guys to a pulp through super long hallways, this time on Disney+. It was originally revealed that Charlie Cox would be returning as Matt Murdock (who briefly had a fling on She-Hulk) along with Vincent D’Onofrio as Kingpin (who appeared in Echo), alongside Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle, the vigilante known as The Punisher. But left out from the Daredevil: Born Again announcement were original Netflix universe cast members Elden Henson and Deborah Ann Woll–a decision that the series’ newest showrunner, when the decision was made to retool Born Again, didn’t agree with.
Thankfully Henson and Woll will reprise their roles as Foggy Nelson and Karen Page respectively, which has kicked up excitement for Born Again’s premiere on March 4. Foggy and Karen were part of a huge cliffhanger at the end of the series’ Netflix run before its untimely cancellation, preparing to establish a new law firm between themselves and Matt–making them as fundamental to Matt’s world in the show as they have been over the years in the comics. So when Born Again saw itself face a creative overhauling after years of work on an iteration that largely strayed away from what made the Netflix show work, for incoming showrunner Dario Scardapane (The Punisher), it was one of the first priorities he made in his case to Marvel. “That was actually one of the first things I said to the bosses,” he told Empire about his push to rework it. “You can’t do this show without Karen and Foggy. They’re Matt’s family. They’re the heart of his world. You can’t take them out without explaining why, and if that explanation doesn’t ring true, don’t take them out.”
He continued to explain how the show felt like it veered off too much without them. “It was much less the world we knew, and more trying to blaze a new trail,” Scardapane pointed out, “but in doing so, they’d forgotten some things that really were necessary to the engine of the story.” Those things being people who are core to what the Daredevil stories are–and so core to Scardapane’s own vision that without them, he wasn’t willing to be a part of the creative process.
“I was willing to lose a job over this one,” he added. “Because Season 3 of the Netflix show ended with a dream, with the names on that napkin. If you don’t pay that off, you’re not giving your characters context. You can’t ignore that dream.”
Daredevil: Born Again–with Scardapane, Foggy and Karen along for the ride, thankfully–begins streaming on Disney+ March 4.
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