The Man Without Fear will make his proper MCU debut in Daredevil: Born Again, and as of this morning, the hotly-anticipated Disney+ series has a trailer. After a brief cameo in 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home and a few appearances in episodes of the 2022 Disney+ series She-Hulk, Charlie Cox’s beloved version of the character will headline his own show for the first time since 2018—and our first glimpse of the new series suggests that Born Again will bring a decidedly mature tone back to the ever-more-cosmically-inclined MCU.
“It’s not entirely unpleasant seeing you again,” remarks Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk at the top of the trailer. A Heat-style coffee-shop sitdown between the Kingpin and the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen—in which Fisk needles Cox’s Matt Murdock about his violent nature in classic “We’re not so different, you and me” arch-nemesis fashion—serves as the framing device for the new trailer, which follows up on the ending of last year’s Echo series, confirming Fisk is now the mayor of New York. Meanwhile, Matt’s given up the Daredevil mask to focus on his legal practice and spend time with Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) and Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson). But all good things cannot last, especially when you’re Matt Murdock—just ask any Daredevil comic book reader—and soon enough, he’s back to the old him.
Other footage shows the return of Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle—aka the Punisher, who shows up with a hatchet and a heavy Going Through Some Stuff beard—and brief looks at the costumed vigilante White Tiger and the villainous artist/serial killer Muse, whose paintings and white, bleeding eye mask are also present. And—if the abundance of blood spatter and gruesome that’s-gotta-hurt sound effects in this trailer are anything to go by—all the violence and broken bones featured so prominently on the original Netflix show appear to be very much a part of this new Disney+ iteration. Despite the overall family-friendly nature of the streamer, it looks like Born Again will be as adult as the previous streaming series (and the paradigmatically gritty Frank Miller comics that inspired it.)
Daredevil’s road to the MCU has been full of starts and stops. After Netflix cancelled its suite of “street-level” Marvel shows—which included Daredevil along with Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and the 2017 crossover event Defenders—it seemed unlikely that audiences would see these characters resurface in the MCU proper anytime soon. And even after it was announced that Daredevil would return as a Disney+ show, more twists and turns lay ahead—including a highly public production pivot that saw the original Born Again creative team jettisoned before the studio brought on longtime Marvel collaborators Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (Moon Knight, Loki) to direct and Dario Scardapane from Netflix’s The Punisher to write.
