Criminals in office, using the power of the government to further their own corrupt dealings while espousing the return of the rule of law. A fiercely divided, yet passionately disconnected and uninformed populace who rolls the dice on an “interesting” candidate. Fear of crime gripping the people who are being sold a simple narrative of easy fixes. A police force unaccountable for its violence, wearing Punisher skulls when the character who inspires their state-sanctioned vigilantism would remorselessly and ruthlessly turn on them for their lawless actions. No, I’m not talking about the news. I’m talking about Daredevil: Born Again. Let’s dip one more time into the Disney+ well with their follow-up to the excellent Netflix series (now available on the mouse’s streaming platform alongside Born Again) from 2015 that picks up right where it left off, with the ten years between the series passing seamlessly and putting our sightless hero right in the middle of an all-too-real New York City. The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is back and the reality of it is terrifying.
Daredevil, if you’re unfamiliar with the background of Marvel’s street level superhero, is a lawyer who was blinded by chemicals in an accident as a young boy trying to save an old man from certain death, resulting in his remaining senses being heightened to the point that they more than make up for his loss of sight. A conflicted Catholic, he goes to law school and at some point, when he finds that the law isn’t always enough to protect the innocent, he decides to put on a mask and make up some of the difference. I’ve been a fan of Daredevil since I was young; I wonder now whether I love Daredevil because I became a lawyer or if I became a lawyer partly because I love Daredevil—what an interesting ouroboros I’ve stumbled upon (shoutout to Atticus Finch, though). He was always one of my favorites and the original series came out when I was a 1L, so I was thrilled that it was really good. And now that it’s returned after a long hiatus, I can say confidently that it really hasn’t missed a beat. Born Again is as adept at fluctuating between frenetic, dynamic action in tight spaces and quiet, contemplative considerations of the meaning of justice as it was before and it is just as compelling. I had my doubts; Disney+ series have been iffy (I will never forgive Disney for turning Matt Fraction’s award winning Hawkeye run into a long form Christmas movie), with Marvel serving up a fair few more misses than hits, but like Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Born Again is a true delight, as well as a real continuation of the original series. Not a reboot, not a reimagining like Friendly Neighborhood, but a real sequel.
I am going to talk about the specifics of Born Again as little as possible—the show starts off with serious implications to the series and I can’t even talk about the first scene without spoiling it for you. So I’m going to avoid that, because you deserve to experience this show without it being spoiled. But, other than some hokey looking CGI (which thankfully hasn’t returned), that kinetic visual style to the action is back—the hallway fight scene from the first season of Daredevil is still probably the best hand to hand action sequence I’ve ever seen—and it hits just as hard as it did in 2015. Charlie Cox is his excellent self. I’ve been impressed with his performance as both Matt Murdock and Daredevil since day one; he’s basically exactly how I envisioned a live action Daredevil would look, act, and sound. I’m just so in love with this series and this character and his sense of justice and his internal torment, I am constantly impressed by where this show chooses to go. One of the strongest touches in the action sequences of both the original series and Born Again is that Daredevil isn’t untouchable. He’s not the god of thunder, he’s not an invincible, gamma-irradiated, rage-fueled behemoth, he’s not even a billionaire in a nigh indestructible power suit. He throws his punches, he gets hit, he has to catch his breath, he falls down, he gets knocked down—but he always gets up again, because that’s what we need him to do. That’s what the people he saves needs him to do.
We open on the sounds of the city; sirens just on the edge of earshot, the traffic, car horns, the general din of pedestrians and vibrant city life. I may not be from New York, but I know it well, living in a major city myself, and it has that cold comfort to it—I always say I can’t sleep without the sound of sirens in the distance—and it puts us right back in the Hell’s Kitchen streets that we know and love from the original series. The place has changed, of course, as our heroes reminisce over the fleabags and dives that have since then turned into corporate gyms, letting us know that time has indeed passed. It may be a small establishing shot, but it means the world to the reality of Daredevil, the place where the steel and cement became nature, and the show quickly explains to us that Matt Murdock has since left behind the mantle of Daredevil. It was a life that he wanted to leave in the past, and after everything he’s been through, I don’t blame him. He leaves the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen in the rearview, hoping to let the system be the one that doles out justice and to do everything in his power as a really good lawyer to guide our blind balance-holder to the right decisions.
But as dirty cops turn into murderers and the newly-elected mayor becomes the biggest criminal that perhaps New York has ever seen, Matt has no choice but to turn to violence. When the system is against you, when it is used to subvert the justice for which it once stood, what other option does he have? Matt has the power and the ability to make a difference, he just needs the will. This brings up his dilemma once again, this time without his friend and confidant Father Lantom to lean on and the conflict burns within him like the world on fire that he sees and in which he lives. Turning your back on a life of extrajudicial violence—vigilantism, in other words—that puts the people you care about in harm’s way, that makes sense. I can understand why Matt wants to put the Devil behind him. But when everyone, including your loved ones, are in danger anyway, when does standing by and letting it happen make you complicit? The law is inherently retroactive; it steps in to try right wrongs that have already been committed and restore the wronged, but it’s unable to stop ongoing wrongdoing. The law can put a murderer in prison, but it can’t bring the victim back to life. If someone were stop it from happening, to interrupt the crime in progress, then there is a much less egregious wrong for the law to attempt to restore. When do you have to change your approach because it’s in your power to do so? At what point does a person working within a broken system, with the ones in power working against them for their own benefit, need to step outside of that system? Yes, vigilantism is a complicated and tricky subject and I would never endorse it in real life, but the series isn’t an endorsement of it either. The depiction here of vigilantes is also complicated and tricky, with a new hero on the block and our old friend the Punisher leaving his stamp on the people in different ways. Dirty cops who once worked to put Frank Castle behind bars now proudly display the Punisher skull on their walls and even tattooed on their skin (in a “What do you mean Homelander is the bad guy?” level of misunderstanding of Punisher’s merciless approach to justice—they’d just as soon show him their tattoo as find the loud end of his gun pointed right at them) and are more than happy to exercise the free reign that the new mayor allows them, in a form of legalized gang violence.
In a stunning turn of empathy, stories of regular people are told, allowing us to hear about the times a vigilante came to their rescue; the family in a burning car, the woman walking at home at night about to face the kind of violence that far too many women face on a regular basis, even a police officer whose own report states that he’s only alive because a vigilante intervened. This is what makes superhero stories so great. It’s not about saving the world from existential crises or who can punch Thanos the hardest before he finishes bedazzling his shiny glove. It’s about who will stand up in the time of need for the person on the street. Who will be the one who steps in when the undefended are forced to face those willing to do the indefensible and stop it from happening? Who will step up to the protect the people who can’t protect themselves? I spoke before about the importance of street level heroes and why their stories are so much more impactful and Born Again leans heavily into this. Heroes like Daredevil don a mask and punch their way through the villains who threaten the lives of the innocent, everyday people who are powerless and would be forgotten moments after they become a headline as a reminder that we can do it too. Not by doing the same, not by donning a mask and taking the law into our own hands, but by standing with each other and for each other, arm in arm and shoulder to shoulder. They are a reminder that it doesn’t take superpowers to be a hero. That our words and our actions have consequences and that the time we have, no matter what your beliefs or belief systems are, is meaningful and the lives we touch matter. This is the best of superhero storytelling. This is a superhero narrative at the highest level. This is a reflection of us and our society in art that looks like a comic book come to life. It’s a lesson in empathy disguised as a beat ‘em up about a guy in a costume. It’s everything I want a superhero story to be.
We are just three episodes into Daredevil: Born Again, which airs Tuesday nights on Disney+, but I am already certain that this is a worthy successor to the best series that Netflix and the MCU have ever produced. If you have seen the original series, watch this. If you haven’t, watch that and then watch this. With this installment, Daredevil, inclusive of Born Again and the original series, has the potential to be the best property in the MCU outside Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Civil War. And in the world we live in now, I could not be happier that we have Daredevil back gracing our screens. Because, as Matt once said, the Murdock boys have the devil in them; and if this is what the devil stands for, then I hope we all have the devil in us too.
