Much like every other kid in the ‘90s with little to no access to comic books, my introduction to Daredevil was through Spider-Man: The Animated Series. When the character made his live-action debut with that Ben Affleck-led feature film, everyone decided to hate it, but I enjoyed it. I mean, I liked it to the extent that I was skeptical about the Netflix adaptation, especially after learning that he wouldn’t be wearing his costume till the very end. However, with each episode of that first season, Charlie Cox and the insanely talented team working around him won me over so much that I was ready to sing hymns about him. A lot of people didn’t like Season 2, and I disagree with all of them. And I think that Season 3 was perfect, cementing Cox’s Matt Murdock as the definitive portrayal of the character. For a second, due to changes in Marvel’s upper management, it seemed like we wouldn’t see him back in the red suit. That said, after a few cameos here and there, Cox has his own show again. Is that cause for celebration? Let’s find out.
Created by Dario Scardapane, Matt Corman, and Chris Ord, Daredevil: Born Again takes place (probably) 8-ish years after the events of the third season of the Netflix show. Matt Murdock, Foggy Nelson, and Karen Page have been working together to take down Wilson Fisk, and Foggy is really close to putting the Kingpin behind bars. But Benjamin Poindexter, AKA Bullseye, guns down Foggy before that momentous occasion, which traumatizes Matt to such an extent that he throws Poindexter off a building with the intention of killing him. Most likely due to Bullseye’s enhanced surgeries, he survives the fall and is successfully incarcerated. However, as Matt has broken his “no kill” rule, he hangs up his boots. Since Page goes on a sabbatical, Matt joins hands with Kirsten McDuffie to continue helping people as a lawyer, not a vigilante. Daredevil’s absence gives Fisk the confidence to rise to power again after his violent altercation with Maya Lopez (his adoptive niece), and he decides to run for mayor of New York. Although Fisk claims he wants to make the city vigilante-free and crime-free, Matt becomes increasingly anxious about his ulterior motives, thereby making him wonder if he should don the costume again.
Disclaimer: This review is based on all 9 episodes of Daredevil: Born Again that were provided to the press by JioHotstar.
The writing of Daredevil: Born Again is weird. It’s trying to pander to the nostalgia of the titular character’s Netflix run. Then it’s trying to put all that in the rear-view mirror to make way for imitations of older characters: Heather Glenn feels like a stand-in for Page, McDuffie for Foggy, and Cherry is like a mixture of Ben Urich and Sister Maggie. But it doesn’t want to progress the story too much, because the writers are apparently reserving all the good stuff for future seasons. So, a huge chunk of Matt’s arc is spent in subplots that are tangentially connected to the main plot, which is a murder mystery centered around Foggy’s death. Given how these subplots oscillate between being some kind of shallow political commentary on racism, classism, and police brutality or a Marvel Cinematic Universe cameo fest, Matt just feels uninteresting. There are some occasional moments of levity or verbose legal exchanges where Murdock gets to shine, but those are too sparse to be impactful. The same can be said about Wilson Fisk. The guy peaks early and then kind of meanders his way to, well, staying on that peak. None of the other villains feel like a genuine threat. They have the most cliché motivations. And they just come and go without leaving much of a mark. As for the supporting characters, I couldn’t bring myself to care about any of them.
For better or worse, Daredevil: Born Again is a Marvel-Disney show. Do you get what I mean? It feels less like an extension of the character’s Netflix run and is more in line with stuff like Hawkeye, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Echo, especially when it comes to the action. To be clear, I’m aware of the fact that those three seasons of Daredevil weren’t just a string of combat and brawls. It was an out-and-out drama series with extensive conversations on justice, faith, family, friendship, love, and more, with a healthy dash of action. It went hard during the dialogue-heavy sequences, but when it went into action mode, it eclipsed anything that was happening on the small or the big screen. The bar is undeniably high, and this “fourth” season doesn’t even come close to clearing it. There are some flickers of good action direction and filmmaking after the 6th episode; everything before that is outright garbage. The editing, the camerawork, the lighting—it’s surprisingly atrocious. No shade on the stunt team; they’ve clearly put in the work. It’s just that, when the writing isn’t pulling its weight, all the focus falls on the action and its flaws, which otherwise would’ve gone unnoticed. The depiction of Matt’s enhanced hearing powers, with the change in the aspect ratio, is interesting, but every time he swings across the rooftops and a half-baked CGI double comes into play, the viewing experience gets ruined.
The cast of Daredevil: Born Again deserves better than this. Charlie Cox is effortlessly charming, gut-wrenching, and an emblem of optimism all at the same time. There is such an earnestness in his performance that you can’t help but get behind him. It’s just that the writing around him is so scattershot that by the time he finally gets to wear the iconic suit, I’m like, “Is that it?” Vincent D’Onofrio is fantastic. It’s lowkey hilarious to see him portray Fisk’s take on diplomacy and subtly go back to his old ways. But the dialogue and character progression of Kingpin are so tepid that even someone as good as D’Onofrio fails to elevate it. Deborah Ann Woll, Elden Henson, Wilson Bethel, and Jon Bernthal are barely in the show, so don’t get your hopes up. Ayelet Zurer gets some solid screen time, and she is good. Out of the newer entrants, it’s Michael Gandolfini who makes you sit up and pay attention to him. The rest of the supporting cast are undoubtedly great. However, at the cost of sounding repetitive, the poor writing doesn’t allow them to shine.
Much like every Daredevil fan out there, I was excited about Born Again after watching that exquisitely edited trailer. And I am pretty sure that a lot of enthusiastic fans will refuse to see the Marvel-Disney show’s shortcomings because they’ll be too happy to have Charlie Cox in the MCU again. But is this what the superhero subgenre and its fandom have been reduced to? We should simply be glad that these versions of our favorite characters haven’t been permanently retired and then recast? We should rejoice at the notion that they’ve been brought into the fold by the great Kevin Feige, instead of sitting on the sidelines and nervously mentioning events from the “sacred timeline”? Because that’s just sad. I’m not really surprised by the fact that the show is as bad as it is. There was a creative overhaul during the writers’ strike. The planned 18-episode season was hacked down to 9 episodes. That obviously affected the tone, the plot, and the character arcs. Hence, the final product is a mess. Well, I hope everyone enjoys it more than I did. Meanwhile, I’ll be here watching those 3 seasons of Daredevil and reminiscing about the good old times.
