Daredevil: Born Again
(2025)

DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN 🏙️

After a seven-year hiatus, the man in red has made his triumphant return to the small screen in Marvel’s latest foray into serialized storytelling with DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN.

In 2015, Netflix captured the hearts of comic book fans with an incredibly refreshing adaptation of the Devil from Hell’s Kitchen. That Daredevil series went against the grain by diving into the brutality of being a hero in a way that no other superhero property was doing at that time. It also had some of the best fight choreography of any live-action superhero story, maybe ever.

The Netflix series, which was cancelled in 2018, is now being revived on Disney+ with a few minor tweaks to connect these prominent cast of characters to a much larger universe of heroes and villains.

DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN starts off with Matt Murdock and his pals celebrating a court case victory, but that celebration is short-lived and quickly takes a turn for the worst when a close friend gets shot and murdered in cold blood. This causes Daredevil to lose control of his humanity as he executes a type of revenge he’s always stayed clear of—death.

That becomes the launching pad for Matt Murdock to hang up the mantle of Daredevil and look to exact a version of justice the only other way he knows how, the legal system. As he makes his changes, Wilson Fisk (Kingpin) is making moves of his own. After a near-death experience, Fisk is dead set on making a difference and protecting the city he’s grown to love by ruling over it as the mayor of New York.

This series follows these two powerful men as they seek out a more righteous way of life, and the difficult decisions they must make while being tested and tempted to revert back to who they’ve always been, leading to a compelling story of growth, decay, and rebirth.

First things first, episode one was the worst series premieres for any Marvel series ever. It was godawful.
I understand needing to set the table for everything that is going to transpire, but this felt scrambled and didn’t allow for the correct amount of breathing room to give the audience a chance to feel the weight of the events that were transpiring on screen.

That being said, this may have given us the worst first episode in the MCU, but it is also the best start-to-finish series Marvel has made to date.

DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN is a huge departure from what Marvel has done in the past, leaning all the way in on the mature, darker nature of Daredevil and the world he has become consumed by through an unravelling procedural drama.

Admittedly, there is a double-edged sword aspect to the series where it works infinitely better as a Matt Murdock story than it does as a Daredevil one. I understand some viewers may be purely looking for a Daredevil crime-fighting show, but that part of the series was its glaring weakness. The fight scenes (and poor use of CGI) felt like a muted-down parody of what the Netflix series was, and the rooftop scenes never get any better. 

Speaking of the Netflix series, there will be a little bit of confusion when certain characters show up as if there's a preexisting history between them that will probably be lost without context. I recommend watching the Netflix series so that you can understand the interconnected relationships between all of the pieces at play.

Those pieces and how they work against each other put into perspective the dilemma of the hero's journey and the challenge of choosing to save people rather than end the problem, which is put perfectly when Matt says, “We’re not serving justice; we’re babysitting chaos.”

A lot of the series is predicated on the philosophical differences that come from having the same problem, but an entirely different view on how to solve it. Even for people who want to be the change they want in the world, somehow their true nature always finds a way of rising to the surface and ruining any chance at a peaceful resolution.

Born Again obviously doesn’t work without Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio bringing their A-game, but the noteworthy addition of Michael Gandolfini (yes, Tony Soprano’s real-life son) became one of the surprising standouts from this season.

This may not (yet) reach the highs of the Netflix series; however, DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN adds a fresh, much-needed jolt of energy into the Marvel Cinematic Universe by blending a gripping story of blind justice with a captivating case of corrupt power. 

Enjoy!

7.8/10 🍿 🎥

Runtime: 50mins

Episodes: 9

Where: New Episodes Stream Wednesdays on Disney+

Daredevil: Born Again Review (2025) The Richmond Reviewer - March 5th, 2025.

#Daredevil #DaredevilBornAgain #MCU #CharlieCox #VincentDonofrio #Punisher #JonBernthal #MichaelGandolfini #Series #Review #MovieReview #MarvelStudios