Daredevil lives! After six years of waiting, the man without fear will return to streaming with Charlie Cox taking up the sticks as Matt Murdock once again. The actor originally starred in the Netflix series Daredevil, which was canned after three seasons due to rights issues. Disney had given Netflix rights to develop shows as it wished, but this has ceased entirely with the advent of its own streaming platform Disney+. While originally Netflix exclusives, shows like Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders, and Daredevil have all moved over to the house of mouse in recent times.
Much has changed though in these eight years and fans of the original series may have reason to be concerned about what the future will hold for their favorite horned superhero. There are a lot of differences to talk about here though as Disney+ surely has a lot of changes in store for Daredevil: Born Again compared to the original show.
There Will be Less Gore
For big fans of the Netflix series, this one may feel like something of a betrayal. The original series very quickly set itself way apart from mainstream Marvel when the fourth of the first season featured Kingpin repeatedly bashing a man's skull in with a car door. Absent too are the quippy jokes and lighthearted moments, the extreme violence that the series had helped to differentiate it from everything you had come to expect. Having your morally upright superhero stab a man's trigeminal nerve to then put him in a coma helps to show that this guy has some loose morality compared to noble Captain America. The show took a more in-depth approach to what the Batman movies will only hint at, Daredevil does not care if these guys are breathing through a straw at the end of a fight.
The new series is promising more time in the courtroom though, which may be a welcome change given how incredible Cox is at this half of the role. The first season of Netflix sees his courtroom time as minimal as possible and the second minimizes it even more, so this could be a fun change-up for the actor.
The New Series Has More Episodes
The new series is looking at doing a whopping 18 episodes which seems quite ambitious compared to the 13 a season in the original series. This decision may actually bode well for the future of the series though. If the shows' writers are asking for this atypical amount, it can mean that they have a lot of places to take the character already planned out. Five extra episodes mean you can have longer or more numerous arcs as well. Season two of the original show ended up doing two-and-a-half arcs with Punisher, Elektra, and The Hand all coming together quite nicely by the final episode. With another five episodes though, they could potentially do even more though.
Bullseye (Wilson Bethel) very well may make a return, The Hand may come back, and Kingpin (Vincent D'Onofrio) is already confirmed as coming back for all 18 episodes. There's a lot of freedom to develop some long crime arcs here with a long enough episode horizon to feature them briefly and then focus on something larger.
Larger Universe Tie-Ins
Now that the show is being done by Marvel entirely instead of Netflix, the path is open to doing more setting up of larger world events. Previously characters were relegated to the subtle acknowledgment of Captain America or "The New York invasion" but never in any specific way that would make a much bigger splash than Hell's Kitchen. Now though they're free to even set up some things that the movies might end up touching upon.
This may be a good thing, or it could be bad news. For all the flack that She-Hulk got, the one part everyone seemed to like would be the relationship between Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) and Matt Murdock. It's safe to assume though with this move that the Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) and Matt Murdock romance has been put on hiatus from the season three ending and the show may not even feature her at all.
No Returning Crew
While it's still early, none of the original showrunners have announced a return to the series yet. Writers Chris Ord and Matt Corman are the only leads revealed so far on this project. It's hard with anything to get the same chemistry going again without the initial mixture that helped make a show work in the first place.
But this isn't necessarily a reason to panic here. In his brief cameo in She-Hulk, fans were quite pleased with how Daredevil's dialogue was handled. True, he seems to be taking some higher-profile clients and questionable romantic choices, but there does seem to be the same level of understanding of the character as before. There's still a year before the show debuts, but there may be some reason to believe that this one, despite the differences, will be a solid addition to the franchise and have a satisfying return to the streets of Hell's Kitchen.