With Daredevil is Street Level MCU "Born Again?"
Coming on the heels of the new Captain America movie's deliberately muddled geopolitics, Daredevil: Born Again's depiction of a convicted felon and abuser running for high office may seem like a more pointed comment on the world outside the comics. On the other hand, villains running for legitimacy is a classic comic-book trope, though one I think of more in the DC universe, where we can often find a Mayor Cobblepot or President Luthor, and I'm pretty sure a nerd like Elon Musk is aware of that. So to the extent that Vincent D'Onofrio's Wilson “Kingpin” Fisk and his mayoral administration may resemble any actual office-holders, it's at least as likely to be because our current leaders have chosen to act like super-villains, rather than the other way around.
Despite rasping most of his lines in a near-monotone, D'Onofrio as Fisk remains the most compelling Marvel bad guy these days, with the heft and self-seriousness of Thanos married to the hubris of Loki. We don't exactly root for him, but we can't wait to see what he'll do next – sort of like the media with psychopathic public figures. He risks being more charismatic that Matt Murdock/Daredevil (Charlie Cox), who has a wider range of emotions and inflections, portraying the “is the mask making him nuts” side of superheroics that we often see in comics, but not as much in the MCU. Most of the Avengers turn to heroism as a calling; Murdock here repeatedly tries to reject it.
Daredevil, however, occupies an unusual place in the MCU. Originally, the Netflix series was connected to the cinematic universe. Then we were told it wasn't – only to the other Netflix shows -- and the fact that it had Alfre Woodard and Mahershala Ali in different roles was a signifier (this was before Gemma Chan got cast in two different roles in the main MCU, naturally). Now it's back to being canon again, and on the whole, Born Again feels much more like season 4 of Daredevil than a new MCU thing – even more so for critics like me who got sent the entire season to binge for review, while most of you will see it weekly. The Netflix shows were notoriously allergic to superhero costumes, frequently finding ways to ditch them, and by the end of the first Born Again episode, Matt has renounced his yet again. Don't worry; he does get it back before the last episode. But the point is there are fewer costume fights here than in your usual MCU show. It also looks much more “on location” than on a Volume, and there is a long-take battle right upfront just to remind you that this show does that.
Then again, this Daredevil is very much for mature viewers, in all senses of that term. Plots involve politics and adult relationships, while characters such as Bullseye up their level of extreme violence like it's appropriately super-enhanced. The Punisher only appears in two episodes, but his presence is felt longer than that, as for the first time in live-action, Marvel addresses the use of the Punisher symbol by particularly violent cops. Disney seems to be as scared as anyone else would be about pursuing copyright violations on that skull against firearms fanatics; it's much easier and safer to go after bootleg Mickey Mouse murals in nurseries. Nonetheless, by the end of this series, nobody will be unclear how the folks at Marvel feel about it.
For those who don't know, Born Again got greenlit for two seasons, and this nine-episode run ends very much at a midpoint rather than a climax. Frustratingly, we'll have to wait until next year to get closure, but at least it's guaranteed. Nonetheless, if some viewers decide they want to wait for the whole thing, that's on Disney Plus for backloading the ratings. There aren't really any Huge Surprises (TM) that would require going super-spoiler free – the only MCU crossovers are third-tier TV characters at best. Kingpin does obliquely refer to Spider-Man, but he's not in the picture. Though if this gets him into Spider-Man: Four Ways From Home, I'm into that.
MCU pacing also helps – Netflix seasons tended to have filler episodes, which were usually needlessly lengthy flashbacks. Here, there's one episode you could arguably call filler, but it's about Matt getting stuck in a bank robbery – still eschewing the costume – and figuring a way out of it without revealing his true abilities. It's everything a one-shot comic should be.
The rest of the time, the show thematically deals with the split identities and personal lives of Fisk and Murdock in parallel. Both seemingly want to stop being these larger-than-life characters, attaining their goals through legitimate means, and have personal lives. Fisk's wife Vanessa has embraced the criminal lifestyle and has to keep it on the back burner now, while Murdock is dating another trope – the psychiatrist who's obsessed with duality and masks. As Fisk gleefully plows ahead with his plans legally, he finds himself freed to be more corrupt, and backslide, while Murdock's attempts to stay within the law, even as city authority gets more and more blatantly fascistic and corrupt, push him to the edge of his last nerve. (This ought to cue INXS' 'Devil Inside,” but instead we get The Vines' “Get Free,” which, fair enough, I'd forgotten about and was glad to hear again.) It's a slow build to another iteration of Daredevil versus Kingpin, with side villains like Muse along the way. Muse is likely to be familiar only to Daredevil comic readers, but they do a decent enough job with him.
I adored She-Hulk for many reasons, including the yellow Daredevil cameo, but this does not feel like that. For one thing, the courtroom stuff feels written by people who know something about the law. TV law shows will never be fully accurate, or they would get boring – the amount of boilerplate canned statements legally required to be read aloud for every hearing nearly drove me nuts the ONE day I attended a courtroom as a reporter. Daredevil: Born Again at least succeeds in TV law plausibility, the one area where She-Hulk's writers fell short and barely seemed to care. Also, as perhaps you have deduced by now, this isn't friendly neighborhood Daredevil. This couldn't have even been on Disney Plus in its first year. I'm generally profanity-deaf when it comes to assessing appropriate language, but I noticed at least one F-bomb in most every episode. I did not notice if Avengers tower appears in the NYC skyline, and will leave that to obsessive screencappers. I can only say I did not see it, if it's there.
This is how a Multiverse should work, in the best case – different shows, with different tones, that can occasionally connect. Star Trek has managed it. Daredevil's New York doesn't seem like The Avengers' New York, but it works unto itself, and mentions of the other heroes don't kill the vibe. I don't know if Daredevil would cut it as a brand new show, but as the return of at least two beloved main characters, it's comfortable. If it plays like Law and Order: Devil Suit Guy Division, that's fine. The insertions of man-on-the-street interviews by Ben Urich's niece, on the other hand, feel right out of The Dark Knight Returns...or Spawn. And did I notice some reenactments of moments in the Ben Affleck movie, or is it just that both iterations tried to recreate the same key comic-book compositions? I'll leave it to more hardcore fans to decide.
Daredevil probably isn't going to suddenly fight aliens, and Kingpin isn't likely to make a babyface turn, even as he semi-faked one for Echo. He has gone back to normal human size, as opposed to his cartoonish bulk in Hawkeye, explained with some throwaway lines about dieting, though there are hints he'll engorge back up before all is said and done. D'Onofrio clearly relishes the part, as Cox does with his Murdock, and watching them battle both passive aggressively and aggressive-aggressively remains a joy.
In an on-the-nose comment about Hell's Kitchen in the first episode, Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) says that it's “Not nostalgia. Reverence for the past, yet hope for the future.” (He's talking about THE SHOW ITSELF, y'all! /sarcasm). I for one hope that this is part of the course correction for Marvel – while I haven't disliked much of their output, they sometimes coast at a baseline. Here, they've taken something that mostly worked already, fixed its biggest problem (pacing) and intruded minimally to bring it into the larger fold. That's the right balance of corporate support, I'd say.
Although I still really do want to see Jon Bernthal in a rubber-muscle Punisher suit with the white boots and gloves one day. Just me?
Daredevil: Born Again drops its first two episodes on Disney+ today, March 4th.
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