'Daredevil: Born Again:' an inconsistent first season
Just over six years after the Season 3 finale and cancellation of Netflix’s “Daredevil,” the devil of Hell’s Kitchen has returned to the MCU once again in a new show that suffers from inconsistency issues.
This is mostly the fault of the show undergoing a creative overhaul where the original writers and filmmakers were fired from the project and a new team was hired to finish the job.
“Daredevil: Born Again” follows the story of Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) six years after the finale of “Daredevil” Season 3 where Matt agrees to not imprison Vanessa Fisk (Ayelet Zurer) for killing FBI agent Ray Nadeem (Jay Ali) in exchange for Wilson Fisk/Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio) agreeing to keep Matt’s identity a secret, and stop hunting Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) and Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll).
One night as the trio of Nelson, Murdock & Page are out drinking at Josie’s Bar, Benjamin “Dex” Poindexter/Bullseye (Wilson Bethel) mounts an attack that kills Foggy, prompting Matt to quit being Daredevil and Karen to move to San Francisco.
At the same time, Fisk wins his mayoral campaign, which causes both Matt and Fisk to revisit each other and remind themselves of their agreement.
Fisk denies being behind the hit on Foggy and warns him of there being consequences should he return to being a vigilante, but Matt can’t help but feel that he’s cheating the system for his personal gain.
This warning becomes a stark reality when Fisk creates an anti-vigilante task force that kills those who don’t follow Fisk’s martial law and banning of vigilantes after Matt suits up as Daredevil again to stop a new serial killer named Muse (Hunter Doohan).
The main plot of the show itself isn’t bad by any means and is quite engaging as Matt tackles different legal cases, such as the trial of Hector Ayala/White Tiger (Kamar de los Reyes), and reunites with old allies like Frank Castle/The Punisher (Jon Bernthal).
“Daredevil: Born Again’s” plot becomes a problem due to most of the show being pre-overhaul. Episodes 2-7 are all pre-overhaul and Episodes 1, 8 and 9 are all post-overhaul with some reshoots spread throughout.
The show begins strong in Episode 1 feeling like we’re back in what is essentially Season 4 of the Netflix show, but all of that disappears for the rest of the show until the final two episodes.
The colors and cinematography that helped make the Netflix series iconic are all gone from Episodes 2-7 and most of the scenes and characters are boring.
There’s a larger and new supporting cast for Matt including the likes of Cherry (Clark Johnson), who is basically replacing the role of the much more interesting Brett Mahoney (Royce Johnson) from the Netflix show, and Kirsten McDuffie (Nikki M. James).
Neither of these two new characters do anything of note in the show that alters the plot or influences Matt’s character, which is a shame because it’s a waste of acting talent.
All the actors returning from the Netflix show don’t skip a beat and feel like they never left, but everyone else is annoying to watch.
This is especially true in the case of anti-vigilante task force member Cole North (Jeremy Earl) and Ben Urich’s (Vondie Curtis-Hall) niece BB Urich (Genneya Walton) who are both interesting characters but get completely wasted in the show.
The worst case of this wasted potential is with Muse’s character. In the comics, Muse has one of the most interesting, gruesome and compelling arcs in recent Daredevil media.
In the show, Muse is reduced to barely two-minute long scenes before a two fights with Daredevil in Episodes 6 and 7 that make it very obvious which was pre-overhaul and which was post-overhaul.
In Episode 7, it’s made clear that Muse’s real identity of Bastian had more character development with Matt’s new girlfriend and counselor Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva) based on the dialogue and tension of their scenes together, but all of that is missing from the show.
Heather also acts like a marriage counselor for Fisk and Vanessa throughout the show, which feels like filler for space alongside the BB Report’s B-roll of New York City’s streets.
Despite all the things wrong with “Daredevil: Born Again,” the show does manage to get the score and choreography nailed down perfectly.
The Netflix score by John Paesano originally featured a piano and heartbeat at its core to highlight how Matt sees the world, but the new score from The Newton Brothers elevates this with more bells and choir singing to elevate the score into something more angelic.
The fight choreography doesn’t miss a beat in comparison with the Netflix show and executes it better with Matt acting more acrobatic, mostly thanks to a higher budget. The gore in the show is also some of the most gruesome to ever grace the television screen, especially during a certain scene in the finale that surprised D’Onofrio upon seeing it kept in the show.
“Daredevil: Born Again” is a show about Fisk and Matt relapsing on their darker halves, but the story doesn’t manage to keep that consistency and instead bounces between trying to be a legal drama or a story of disconnected pre-overhaul scenes.
There’s potential for Season 2 to be much better as there are elements in Season 1 that feel like an evolution of what was in the Netflix show, but the show slightly misses the mark in its first season.
Daredevil: Born Again (Season 1) — ★ ★ ★ ½
Release Date: March 4, 2025
Creator: Matt Corman, Chris Ord
Runtime: 1hr
Rating: TV-MA