Marvel finally did the thing nobody asked for but everybody secretly wanted: they brought back the guy who gets beaten half to death every Tuesday night in Hell's Kitchen. *Daredevil: Born Again* has landed on Disney+, and if you thought the mouse house would sand down the edges of everyone's favorite Catholic guilt-powered vigilante, congratulations, you were wrong.
Charlie Cox is back in the red horns, which is great news for people who spent six years yelling "save Daredevil" into the void of social media like it was a prayer circle.
The man looks like he's been doing push-ups in a parking garage for the entire hiatus, and honestly, good for him.
The show doesn't waste time pretending Matt Murdock is fine.
A blind lawyer who moonlights as a guy who falls off buildings is basically the human embodiment of a LinkedIn profile that says "thrives under pressure." Here's the part that got the internet all hot and bothered: they brought back Wilson Fisk, because apparently Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin is the only Marvel villain allowed to have a personality.
A giant bald crime lord in a mayoral race.
New York politics already looks like a fever dream, so this tracks.
What nobody expected was the tonal whiplash.
The original Netflix run was basically a thirteen-hour PSA about head trauma set to ominous cello music. *Born Again* keeps the bone-crunching but adds a surprising amount of courtroom drama, which means half the audience is here for the punches and the other half is here for a man in a suit arguing about subpoenas.
Some critics say it's a triumphant return.
Others say it's a slow burn that forgot to bring the fire.
Reddit is, predictably, at war with itself, which is the only consistent thing on that website besides people reposting the same meme from 2014.
The real question is whether Disney can resist the urge to fold Daredevil into a giant CGI sky-beam finale where he teams up with a talking raccoon.
Early signs suggest they're letting him stay grounded, which is smart, because the moment Matt Murdock cracks a joke about multiverse shenanigans, the whole vibe dies.
There's also the matter of Foggy and Karen.
The kind you only get from people who have rewatched a hallway fight scene forty times and will tell you about it unprompted at a dinner party.
You can't please these people, but the show is at least trying.
Verdict: it's messy, it's violent, and it's weirdly earnest about a man who dresses like a devil to punch his feelings.
In other words, it's exactly what Daredevil has always been. **The Takeaway:** Marvel remembered that a guy getting his ribs broken in a stairwell is more compelling than a portal opening over Manhattan.
Final Thoughts
If they keep letting Matt Murdock suffer in small, personal ways, this thing might actually work.