Warning: This post contains spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again
On Tuesday, Disney+ dropped the first two episodes of Daredevil: Born Again, a continuation of the three-season Netflix Marvel series centered on a blind lawyer with superhuman senses living in Hell’s Kitchen. The revival has been in development for a while—originally, the plan was to give it a lighter tone than the noirish original series—but a creative overhaul in 2023 led to a more serialized approach. That means we’ll see at least seven major characters from the show, some of whom have been up to a lot in the past six years.
Here’s where we left the main returning characters from Daredevil—and what they’re up to so far in the new season.
Matt Murdock / Daredevil
Matt (Charlie Cox) spent much of the original run dealing with an identity crisis: Should he devote his most of his time to lawyering, or to being a masked vigilante? Was it sustainable to juggle both? For a while, he ditched his normie side altogether, roaming the streets full-time and neglecting the friends who kept him grounded. In the main timeline of Born Again, though, Matt has retired the Daredevil persona entirely and gone straight, trying to make New York City a better place through law rather than back-alley beatdowns. He’s the head of a new firm with his partner, former assistant district attorney Kirsten McDuffie (Nikki M. James), who actually sets him up with his new girlfriend Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva), another big comics character. Life is okay for Matt these days, though it’s obvious he can’t suppress his other half for long—especially when he’s dealing with dirty cops who force him to bust out his ass-kicking skills.
But there’s one event in particular that caused Matt to set Daredevil aside (for the time being, at least). Which leads me to …
Franklin “Foggy” Nelson
It’s the big shocker of the first 15 minutes in the premiere: Foggy (Elden Henson) is shot and killed by Benjamin “Dex” Poindexter (Wilson Bethel), aka the frequent Daredevil comics villain Bullseye. The reasoning matters less than the aftermath: Matt finally snaps and throws Dex off the roof of a building, intending to kill him and almost succeeding.
Once Foggy found out the truth about Matt’s secret identity in the original Daredevil series, their friendship got very rocky. But that show ended with Matt, Foggy, and Karen (Deborah Ann Woll) reuniting to work together under a new Nelson, Murdock & Page umbrella, so it’s a shame to see the trio get broken apart so early in Born Again. Still, the impressive execution of the death scene (when it comes to both the kinetic action and the emotional consequences) partially makes up for the loss.
Karen Page
Karen was Daredevil’s original love interest in the comics, but in the show she became much more of her own character, independent of the titular hero. In fact, she only really dated Matt briefly in Season 2, mostly serving as Matt and Foggy’s other best friend—and then hopping over for a regular role on The Punisher. Over the course of Daredevil, she went from office manager to journalist to business partner, and at the beginning of Born Again she’s still working at Nelson, Murdock & Page. After Foggy’s death, though, she relocates to San Francisco and loses touch with Matt, so it remains unclear exactly how much she’ll feature in the next seven episodes.
Wilson Fisk / Kingpin
Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), aka the crime lord Kingpin, is really the second lead of Born Again. He’s coming into the show with a different perspective from in the original series: He has been to prison multiple times now, returning to captivity at the end of Season 3 in order to keep his wife Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer) safe from prosecution. He also got shot in the eye by his adoptive niece Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) in Hawkeye, an event explored more during his failed mentorship of her in Echo—a series that ended with Maya using her powers to emotionally break Fisk and force him to re-experience the memories of the abusive father he killed.
In the premiere of the revival, Fisk announces his run for mayor of New York—and gets elected that same episode off his crime-busting yet anti-vigilante platform. He insists that he’s gone straight now, but he clearly has no real intention of cutting down entirely on his usual violence and blackmail. There’s a temporary truce between him and Matt contingent on maintaining their newly clean personas, but Fisk will stop Matt if he busts out the Daredevil suit again, and Matt will stop Fisk if he starts killing again. Either of them could snap at any moment.
Benjamin “Dex” Poindexter / Bullseye
Season 3 of Daredevil provided a disturbing origin story for Bullseye, introducing him as an FBI agent who begins working for Fisk and killing people while impersonating Daredevil. But when Dex found out that his employer killed Julie, the woman he was stalking, he attacked Fisk and Vanessa, leading to Fisk breaking his spine. During Dex’s experimental surgery at the end, the camera lingered on a bullseye symbol reflected in his eye, a sign of his transformation into the famous comics version of the character.
Early in Born Again, Dex is as ruthless and psychopathic as ever, killing Foggy and at least ten others in the fight at Josie’s Bar. After surviving Matt’s murder attempt, he’s sentenced to many life sentences in prison, though it seems likely he’ll be on the loose again before long.
Vanessa Marianna-Fisk
Fisk’s art gallery curator wife got actively involved in his criminal empire shortly before their marriage late in Season 3, ordering the death of an FBI agent named Ray Nadeem (Jay Ali). She almost faced consequences for it, too, but Matt agreed not to reveal her involvement if Fisk went back to prison and didn’t harm Foggy or Karen. In Born Again, it becomes clear that Vanessa was crucial in making Fisk’s business bulletproof for his mayoral run, though there are tensions in the marriage from Fisk’s long absence while recovering from the events of Echo.
Frank Castle / Punisher
This other iconic antihero from the comics first showed up in Season 2 of Daredevil before getting his own spinoff show anchored by Jon Bernthal’s spot-on performance. Castle hasn’t shown up yet in Born Again, and it’s unclear how exactly he will reenter the picture, though his friendship with Karen will likely come into play. He was last seen in the finale of The Punisher, when he resumed his vigilantism. That sets up the potential for him to come into conflict with either Daredevil or Kingpin.
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