Actor Charlie Cox, who plays Matt Murdock aka Daredevil, has been in the MCU for quite a long time with three seasons of his own show, a season of Defenders, and a respectable amount of MCU cameos all under his belt. While Daredevil gets a lot of buzz, people don’t talk about The Defnenders as often, and while enjoyable it did not leave a very significant mark for itself in the MCU. The series had its high points and while I’d have to go back and watch rewatch the series again (which I probably will end up doing at some point anyway) to point them out, when asked Cox knew right away which scene he’d recall for defining the culmination of what made up not just series, but the entire era of shows.
While at a San Francisco Fan Expo, Daredevil and soon to be Daredevil: Born Again actors Cox and Wilson Bethel (who plays Matt Murdock’s nemesis Bullseye) answered a couple questions from fans and one in particular was interesting because it had to do with the last era of Netflix Marvel Cinematic Universe shows that aired on Netflix.
The shows on Netflix included Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and all culminated with The Defenders (think Avengers for Netflix but street level) where the characters teamed up to take down the criminal organization The Hand. Jon Bernthal’s The Punisher also spun off from those shows. The MCU lineup on Netflix was more mature, but it was a different style of show and welcomed by audiences.
Cox was asked what moment from The Defenders he thought defined that whole era of Netflix shows, to which he replied:
“It’s the scene where I wake up in the police station and I realize that Danny Rand (Iron Fist) has been taken and Stick (Scott Glen) is dead and all these things…”
The scene puts Daredevil in a position that made it look as if he can committed the murder/kidnapping when it reality Elektra had killed Stick and taken Danny Rand. The hero mourns his mentor while realizing the weight of the situation. Defining scenes aside, Cox also took up a minute to talk up the shows creative team:
“What Marco Ramirez did was amazing when he wrote that show. It was really challenging , how you service all of these characters, all of whom have got all this history. They’ve all had their own stand alone shows, put them together and tell a story and you know, that’s a really tough job for a writer.”
The actor continues to talk about the Defenders scene:
“I would learn in that moment about acting something I really appreciate about how much you can convey with a single word, just a small moment.”
All of the series that made up that era were allowed to go outside the normal boundaries in terms of mature content that was typical for Marvel at the time, and as a result there were some very emotionally powerful scenes throughout all of the shows. That era has long since past, but fan favorite trio Matt Murdock, Foggy Nelson (Elden Hensen), and Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) for the new series coming to Disney+, Daredevil: Born Again.
Actor Wilson Bethel, who played the villain Bullseye in season 3 of the original series and will be back for Born Again also talked about a number of topics, but most notably confirmed that the new show will take place five years after the events of the Netflix series. He spoke about Born Again having to catch viewers up on the lives of the characters for the past five years and all of the ‘twists and turns’ involved:
“The show doesn’t pick up the day after we last saw it. It picks up five years later. And so in theory, these are characters who have all lived five years of life and all of the twists and turns that you take in the meantime.”
Born Again brought back most of the original cast, so it will be interesting to still how their lives have changed over the past half decade. We didn’t really get a ton of Bethel’s Bullseye in the original so it will be interesting to see what else they do with his character in this new show, as he is typically considered Daredevil’s main villain.
It always interesting to see what actors say at Fan Expo’s and this one was not a let down, as Daredevil: Born Again in one of the most anticipated new Marvel projects coming to Disney+ on March 5th, 2025. Are you excited for the Daredevil revival? Sound off on our social media!