While promoting the first season of Daredevil: Born Again, series showrunner Dario Scardapane revealed that an integral part of his pitch to get the show back on track was bringing back Daredevil co-stars Elden Henson and Deborah Ann Woll, both of whom were absent from Marvel’s original plans for the new series. “I was willing to lose a job over this one,” Scardapane told Empire, adding that pitching the returns of Foggy Nelson and Karen Page was “one of the first things I said to the bosses.“
You can’t do this show without Karen and Foggy. They’re Matt’s family. They’re the heart of his world. You can’t take them out without explaining why, and if that explanation doesn’t ring true, don’t take them out.
-Dario Scardapane, Empire Magazine
“Because Season 3 of the Netflix show ended with a dream, with the names on that napkin,” Scardapane explained, adding, “If you don’t pay that off, you’re not giving your characters context. You can’t ignore that dream.” And so, Episode 1 of Daredevil: Born Again, “Heaven’s Half Hour,” does indeed make good on that dream as Nelson, Murdock and Page emerge from their dream office for another of many nights on the town. And what follows is a bamboozling nightmare that might just prevent fans from ever trusting anyone at Marvel Studios again.
If bringing back Henson and Woll was meant to bring a preestablished order to Daredevil:Born Again, then the first 16 minutes of the first episode are the most entropic of a series built around chaos. Crafted by Scardapane after he and directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead boarded the project, Episode 1 apparently exists to prove that you can indeed “do this show without Karen and Foggy.”
The death of Foggy Nelson at the hands of the deranged and somehow-still-alive-after-casually-being-thrown-off-a-roof-what-the-fuck Bullseye catapults Matt Murdock’s world into a state of such significant disorder that no further changes can take place within it. And so, Murdock is born again into an all-new, all-different world, one brighter and more hopeful than any the writers of the original Netflix series ever imagined.
Abashed the Devil stood, And felt how awful goodness is.
-John Milton, Paradise Lost
Bereft of his besties, Murdock locks the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen away and leans into lawyering and living, thriving in a shockingly satisfying new status quo. A new firm (Murdock & McDuffie), a new love interest (Margarita Levieva‘s fascinating Heather Glenn) and some new glasses set Matt up to move forward in a direction that the Netflix showrunners never knew existed. And just as that wonderful new world gains its own momentum, Wilson Fisk is born again.
Set sometime in 2025, the “current events” of Episode 1 of Daredevil: Born Again set the foundation for a fascinating first season of a four season series. A decidedly douchey Daniel Blake and a stunningly Sisyphean BB Urich aside, “Heaven’s Half Hour” does exactly what it needs to do by giving both Matt Murdock and the fans every reason to forget everything they’ve held dear about the original Netflix series. The lunch meeting between the series’ leads reveals that neither man can truly put his past behind him, establishing the inevitability of hostility even as Fisk’s pursuit of the mayorship of New York City would seem to make him untouchable.
Fisk’s role in the season is so large that, as one promotional poster seems to hint, the series could just as well be titled Kingpin: Born Again. As Matt learns to move forward without his heart and soul, Fisk seeks to close the gap that has grown between him and his wife, Vanessa, who ran the criminal empire while her husband was away (see Echo). Like Murdock, Fisk has chosen a new path forward and in doing so, claims to have locked away the Kingpin of Crime.
Of course, Marvel Studios didn’t revive this series and being back both Cox and D’Onofrio for what looks to be a total of 17 episodes for them to have tea. A showdown is looming and Episode 1, created by Scardapane following the creative overhaul, wonderfully put the two men on seemingly parallel paths that are somehow bound to intersect.
Source: Empire
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