Josh Reviews Daredevil: Born Again

I was delighted when the MCU started incorporating aspects of the Marvel Netflix shows, by bringing back Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock in Spider-Man: No Way Home and then again in an excellent episode of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law… and by bringing back Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk in both Hawkeye and Echo.  However, I still never expected to see a full-throated resurrection of one of those Netflix shows!  And yet, that’s what we got here in Daredevil: Born Again.  I love to see the current MCU embracing the Netflix continuity and characters (and I’d love to someday see Jessica Jones and Luke Cage return as well!!  They can leave Danny Rand on the sidelines, though…)

The nine-episode first season of Daredevil: Born Again is an enjoyable show.  It’s not perfect, and it’s not at all the type of show I wanted it to be (it’s much darker and violent than I’d expected/hoped).  But I enjoyed all nine episodes, and I’m curious to see how all the storylines continue in season two (which is currently in production — what a rare delight to know that a Marvel Disney+ show is definitely getting a second season!).

The show succeeds in striking a balance between standing on its own and embracing the continuity of the Netflix show to a degree I did not expect.  I don’t think this show would be too hard to follow, even if you’ve never seen the Netflix show.  That being said, I was pleased that in addition to Mr. Cox and Mr. D’Onofrio, the show also brought back from the Netfilx show Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson as Karen Page and Foggy Nelson; Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle/The Punisher; Ayelet Zurer as Vanessa Fisk; and even Wilson Bethel as Bullseye (introduced in season three of the Netflix show).  I liked seeing all of those characters again.  On the other side of the coin, there were definitely times I wish the show would have provided a little more expository material to remind viewers about some of the backstory.  (For example, I remember Bullseye from the Netflix show, but I have no recollection of where things were left with him, what his feelings were towards the Kingpin, etc.  It’d have been nice to have been reminded of that.  And newbies to Daredevil would probably have benefitted from some explanation of Bullseye’s superpowers.  Even Daredevil’s powers aren’t really explained!!  The show assumes we understand, but I think some extra time spent on clarity would have been helpful.)

The show also establishes a fun array of new characters.  My favorite was Michael Gandolfini (The Many Saints of Newark) as Daniel Blake, a dim bulb who is fiercely attached to Fisk and climbs the ranks in his staff.  Mr. Gandolfini is terrific playing this lovably loathsome toadie who slides right into doing awful stuff on the Kingpin’s behalf.  I loved his arc across the season.  We also get to meet Margarita Levieva as Heather Glenn, a therapist who starts dating Matt (and also, in a plot development that I found a little silly, starts providing marriage counseling to Wilson and Vanessa Fisk); Zabryna Guevara as Sheila Rivera, Fisk’s campaign manager and chief of staff; Nikki M. James (Severance) as Kirsten McDuffie, Matt’s new law partner; Clark Johnson (Homicide: Life on the Street; The Wire) as Cherry, a former cop who now works as a P.I. for Matt & Kirsten’s firm; Kamar de los Reyes as Hector Ayala/The White Tiger; Genneya Walton as BB Urich, the daughter of reporter Ben Urich (who was killed in the first season of the Netflix show); and Arty Froushan as Buck Cashman, Fisk’s right-hand-man.

While this show doesn’t connect too strongly to other MCU stuff, I enjoyed seeing various MCU connections woven into the season.  My favorite, of course, was getting to see Mohan Kapur reprise his role from Ms. Marvel Yusuf Khan, Kamala Khan’s dad!!  I loved seeing Yusuf and Matt on an adventure together in episode five, trapped in the bank during a hostage situation.  And I was surprised and delighted to see Tony Dalton back as Jack Duquesne/The Swordsman (after previously appearing in Hawkeye!) — I’d love to see more of Mr. Dalton in season two!

The one MCU appearance that I really wanted was Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk.  I loved seeing Jen and Matt hook up when Charlie Cox appeared as Matt.Daredevil on the She-Hulk show, and I really wanted Tatiana/Jen to be a part of this Daredevil show.  I’m bummed they didn’t even reference Jen/She-Hulk at all.

Which brings me to my comment from above that this isn’t the type of show I wanted it to be.  After the very dark and dour Netflix show, which seemed to always resist actually depicting Daredevil as a costumed superhero, I loved the way Matt/Daredevil was depicted when he was brought into the MCU on She-Hulk.  I loved this lighter, funnier, more swashbuckling version of Daredevil.  I loved his costume; I loved seeing him jump and fight and use his billy club.  This was what I was hoping for in Born Again.  I was surprised that, instead, the show turned back into the grim and gritty tone of the Netflix show.  I’ll admit that it works for the most part; it’s just not what I wanted.  I wanted a lighter, more episodic show.  But I do understand why they made the choices they made.  I think many fans — particularly all those who loved the Netflix Daredevil show — wanted a tougher, more violent Daredevil show, and I do understand the appeal.  I was unhappy that, after the fight that opens the premiere, Daredevil didn’t put back on his costume until the sixth of this nine-episode season (I found myself being like Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park: “um, now eventually you do plan to have Daredevil on your Daredevil show, right?”), I liked that when we saw DD in costume and fighting, we got to see him running and jumping on rooftops and making great use of his billy-club, things I’d missed from the Netflix show.  We even got a classic “superhero smashes through the window to fight the supervillain” moment in episode eight!  Right on!  And while this show was dour and contained more Matt Murdock moping that I’d wanted, it was also funnier than the Netflix show, and we did get a number of opportunities to see Charlie Cox play Matt’s joyful, charismatic side.  Mr. Cox was great at that!  (I loved, for example, the scene of Matt flirting with another lawyer to argue her down to a better deal for his client.)

The show was very, very violent.  It was actually too violent for me in some cases.  (The gruesome violence committed by the mass-murdering villain the Muse was a bit too much for me.)  I like seeing Marvel allowing some of its shows to go darker.  They went that way in Echo and went even farther here.  I like the variety, and I do like some good bone-crushing superhero fights, though if I had my druthers they’d have toned it down a bit here.  (I will admit that I laughed in glee at the absolutely disgusting fate of Commissioner Gallo at the end of the season; though it really grossed out the rest of my family.)

The story of this show’s production is wild.  After shooting six episodes, the writer’s strike happened, at which point Marvel was apparently unhappy, so they fired the original show-runners and directors, and hired a new team to basically start over.  This season is a Frankenstein-like combination of scenes/stories from the original version mixed together with stuff reshot by the new team.  (For more information on this, click here and here.). I’ve never heard of such a thing in TV production — to make half a season and then start over??  Impressively, I felt the season flowed smoothly and the mix of old and new footage seemed to me to fit together pretty well.  I did not feel that I could see the seams of the reshoots and reworking the way I could in the last two MCU movies, The Marvels and Captain America: Brave New World.

Someday I’d love to learn more about what changed between the two versions of this show.  That first linked Hollywood Reporter article suggests that the original version was too light, and that the show was changed to be more dark and violent like the Netflix show.  I understand that instinct, but like I’d written above, I’d wanted this show to be lighter and closer to the version of Matt we got in She-Hulk.  The article also says that the original version was too much of a legal procedural — but I must say, in theory, that sounds like a great way to make a Daredevil show!  My favorite part of this season was the two-episode arc of the trial of the White Tiger.  I wanted more of that sort of thing!  The weirdest thing in that article was that the Marvel brass was upset that Matt didn’t appear in costume until episode four — but in the current version, that doesn’t happen until episode six!!  So that’s pretty funny to me.  The flashback Daredevil fight that opens the first episode was a reshoot; I guess they added that in to give audiences a little taste of DD in costume at the start of the show.  That makes sense.  One change I do know I like is that this version is tied more closely to the original Netflix show.  I don’t believe Foggy and Karen were in the original version; so that’s a change I can get behind.

I really enjoyed the way the show is structured to parallel Matt and Wilson Fisk’s respective journeys.  That’s very cleverly done.  They’re both struggling to resist falling back into their old, violent patterns, and as the season unfolds, they both lose those struggles… except, of course, we want Matt to put on the costume again!  But I like that this show makes an effort to show Matt being a hero, in and out of costume.  Too often the Netflix show was just about violence and vengeance.  I like seeing Matt struggle with those aspects of being Daredevil, and at the same time, I’m glad that in a number of ways (building to Matt’s taking a bullet for a villain late in the season) this show allowed him to be more heroic.

Overall, I was also happy with the balance between episodic and serialization in the show’s storytelling.  I liked that we got several different mini-arcs (the trial of the White Tiger, the supervillain Muse, etc.), and even an entirely stand-alone episode (episode five, the bank heist caper), while the character arcs carried through all of the episodes.  This is the approach I want streaming shows to take!  If anything, I’d have loved a few more stand-alone episodes.  Episode five (which, from what I’ve read, was a hold-over from the original version of this show) was my favorite episode of the season.

Other thoughts on this show:  (There are some SPOILERS ahead.  I kept them at a minimum, but if you want to go in clean, stop here!)

• Born Again is the title of one of the most famous Daredevil storylines from the comics, written by Frank Miller and illustrated by David Mazzucchelli.  This show doesn’t adapt that story (they’d already used aspects of that storyline in the third season of the Netflix show).  That’s a bit of a bummer, but I understand why they grabbed the name.
• I liked the fight that opens episode one.  I loved that it was structured to appear to be a “oner” (an unbroken, continuous shot), as a link back to the Netflix show (in which each season had one stand-out “oner” fight sequence).  I wish that fight looked better visually.  I thought it was surprisingly muddy visually, with too many shots that seemed to me to obviously be stunt doubles.
• The character of the Muse didn’t work for me.  I didn’t think the character was interesting enough for me to care about him, and the show never bothered to clarify his powers and goals.  Also, all that bloody stuff was just so gruesome; it was a bit too much for me.
• I liked that the show adapted the Mayor Fisk storyline from the comics.  Suddenly a world in which a supervillain is in charge of the government, using government to amass his own wealth and power, and tightening a fascistic grip on the citizens, doesn’t seem so far fetched.
• It was interesting to see a version of Vanessa in this show that seemed far more evil than we’d seen before.  Her main grievance with Wilson at the start of the season is that he abandoned their crime empire!  (And then of course she shoots someone at the end of the season.)  This version of Vanessa was very interesting, it’s just that she didn’t much resemble the Vanessa who was an innocent art dealer in the original first season of the Netflix show.  (I have a vague recollection that she did break bad at the end of season three, but I don’t remember that season well enough to be sure.)
• Fisk seemed to have been cured of his evil inclinations at the end of Echo.  I was curious how that would be handled here.  I like what they did.  It’s interesting that they don’t directly reference Echo — on the one hand, I’d have liked to have seen SOMEONE talk about that, on the other hand, I understand their not wanting to bog down this show in too much stuff from previous shows.  I liked the way the show played out Wilson’s arc of his sliding back into his evil inclinations.  I liked the way they used his meals to illustrate this.  He moves from smaller, healthier-looking meals to more gluttonous ones, and when we see his suit tear late in the season, we know that’s a bad sign!
• Speaking of the Kingpin and Echo, it’s crazy to me that Echo shot him in the head at the end of Hawkeye, but now he’s totally fine with just a tiny scar by his eye.  (Though I guess Daredevil also has super-healing, because he gets shot in the shoulder in episode eight but definitely still uses that arm to fight cops in episode nine!  I rolled my eyes a bit at that.)
• I like the casual way people talked about the White Tiger’s magic amulet.  That’s a nice sign of this show’s being in the MCU, where weird superhero stuff happens, as opposed to the original Netflix show.
• On the other hand, people on the show talk a lot about vigilante activity in New York — there’s a weird moment late in the season in which one of Kingpin’s people says vigilante activity is down by such-and-such percent — but the show doesn’t show us many examples of vigilantes!  There’s DD and White Tiger… and in one brief video clip we see that the Swordsman is active… we know Spider-Man exists in the MCU, though he’s not mentioned in this show… so what other vigilantes are out there?
• I liked that the show introduced Hector Alaya’s daughter Angela (Camila Rodriguez).  I liked her character, and of course in the comics we know she eventually becomes the White Tiger herself.  I guess we have another possible Young Avenger character for someday in the future!
• I was happy to see Foggy and Karen back, though I’d have loved to have seen more of them.  I understand they’ll be more involved in season two, which would make me happy.
• I loved having Jon Bernthal back as the Punisher.  His first appearance, a great mid-season argument with Matt, was fantastic, and I was happy he was a big part of the events in the finale.  (Though it was weird that Matt just sort of left him, captured by the cops, at the end, right??)  I got very excited when, early in the season, we saw cops wearing Punisher emblems.  That paralleled a great story from the comics, which addressed the way real-life cops and other violent militia types in our country have co-opted the Punisher emblem.  In the comics, Frank gives a terrific speech rejecting cops’ using his symbol and the vigilante violence that implies.  I was very excited for the show to adapt that, and they totally built to that moment in the finale… and then they totally whiffed it and skipped the speech!!  I was so disappointed!!  Click here to see how this moment played out in the comics.  I wonder why the show so clearly dropped the ball on that moment.
• I really liked all the new characters introduced in this show.  I wish the show had spent a little more time with them to better develop them.  For instance, take Matt’s new law partner Kirsten.  Nikki M. James does a great job playing her, and I was interested in this character… but we don’t really get to know much of anything about her.  The new characters on the Kingpin’s side got more development.  I’d love to see more depth added to Matt’s friends and colleagues, like Kirsten and Cherry, in season two.
• I liked the detective Angie Kim (Ruibo Qian) introduced in episode five, and I was glad she popped up a few more times later in the season, including being in the group gathered at Josie’s bar in the finale.  I’d love to see more of her in season two.  I also really hope that Matt brings in some of his Defenders friends in season two, to help him retake the city from Wilson Fisk!!
• Speaking of which, I thought it was weird to have an African-American character named Luke in the finale.  For a split-second when we saw him, I was hoping it was Luke Cage!
• Matt seems to play pretty loose with his secret identity this season.  Will that come into play in season two?  Doesn’t Angela recognize his voice and facial hair?  Doesn’t Heather??  (Heather does remember that DD knew her name, but she doesn’t seem to take that thought any further ye t…)  There’s a huge fight in Matt’s apartment in the finale, which then gets blown up… will anyone connect the dots from that?  I was also wondering if Daredevil’s speech in Josie’s bar at the end of the finale was implying that the people gathered there know his secret identity…

This season wasn’t perfect.  It was darker and more violent than I’d wanted, and there were times when the storytelling felt a little shaggy.  Seeing so little Daredevil in this Daredevil show seemed like a strange choice to me.  On the other hand, there’s a lot here that worked really well, and I enjoyed every one of these nine episodes.  I’m glad that a second season is already in production, and I hope we don’t have to wait too long to see it!!