The Marvel Cinematic Universe has a long history of building towards team-ups. After crafting its entire first phase around slowly forming the Avengers, the franchise doubled down and began to rapid-fire its groupings. Since 2012, fans have been treated to live-action versions of nearly everything, from classic assemblies like the Guardians of the Galaxy to original creations like the Revengers. Now, after years of speculation, fans are gearing up for what looks to be the next Marvel super team to transition from page to screen – the Midnight Sons. With all the supernatural projects currently in development at Marvel Studios, it seems like a give-in that the company will eventually bring its mystic heroes together for a grand battle against the dark arts. The only real question still lingering is who might make the final roster.
One character that seems like an obvious choice is Oscar Isaac‘s Moon Knight, whose titular Disney+ series is set to debut at the end of this month. The character is a longtime member of the team in the comics, and has strong ties to the worlds of mythology that the team’s stories often pull from. Isaac confirmed his interest in a hypothetical Midnight Sons project during a recent interview, in which he listed other members of the team he’d like to interact with as Blade, Ghost Rider, and Daredevil. This all sounds fine and dandy at first glance, but becomes more interesting upon a further look. While Blade and Ghost Rider are both founding members of the group in the comics, Daredevil has never once actually been part of the roster. Also, it’s sort of up-in-the-air if it even makes sense for him to play a role on the team in the first place.
It’s entirely possible that Isaac, a relative newcomer to comics, made a mistake in assuming Matt Murdock would join the line-up. After all, the character often operates in close proximity to many of the team’s famous faces, and has come into conflict with supernatural forces before. A more intriguing option, however, is that Isaac has been briefed on an unannounced Midnight Sons project and accidentally let slip that Daredevil will be involved. A longshot, of course, but not a total reach. Daredevil has become massively popular with fans since his Netflix (now Disney+) series began in 2015, and was just formally introduced to the MCU with a cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Marvel Studios will likely want to include him on some sort of team in the future, and something like the Midnight Sons would make a much better fit for the Avocado-at-Law than the highly public, large-scale Avengers.
Daredevil has spent time with the Avengers before, most notably as a member of the early 2010’s New Avengers, but his time with the team never felt permanent or overly characteristic. The Man Without Fear is traditionally a “street level hero”, dealing mostly with local threats that wouldn’t even hit the Avengers radar. For the most part, aside from the occasional team-up with Spider-Man or former flame Black Widow, Murdock operates as a lone vigilante. Marvel Television attempted to reconcile this local hero concept with their desire to pull off a crossover event by making Daredevil a central figure in a new “street hero” iteration of the Defenders. While the limited series flopped with critics and the team dissipated after a single outing, it did do something sort of interesting. It proved that Charlie Cox‘s take on Daredevil, the one we will continue to see in the MCU going forward, is actually pretty darn charming in a group setting.
So, if anyone was wondering if MCU Daredevil can exist on a team, the answer would be yes. As both a constituent and a leader. The next step in over-analyzing Isaac‘s verbal slip is determining if Daredevil can function as a member of the Midnight Sons, specifically. For those who are still confused, the Sons are a group of Marvel heroes and anti-heroes who came together to fend off dark, powerful, supernatural threats that regular heroes are ill-equipped to handle. Typically consisting of characters like Ghost Rider, Blade, Man-Thing, Hellstrom, Werewolf by Night, and even Doctor Strange, the team has done battle with villains like Lilith, Mother of All Demons, Zarathos, and Mephisto. One might consider these baddies out of Daredevil’s paygrade if he hadn’t had a history with his own mystic threats, often coming out of conflicts with The Hand, or if the Midnight Sons hadn’t successfully recruited fellow “regular vigilante” The Punisher in the past.
Ultimately, whether or not Daredevil works as part of the MCU’s Midnight Sons feels like it might depend on what sort of story Marvel would like to tell when the time comes. If they’re going with a massive, world-ending Darkhold tale, then it might be best for them to focus on their heroes with magical powersets and supernatural expertise. However, if they go back to the realm of Defenders-level threats, a la resurrected assassins and shadowy martial arts figures, then Daredevil would be a welcome addition to the crew. The horned do-gooder was once famously part of a collective that was somewhere in-between the Midnight Sons and Defenders, known as the Marvel Knights. This group was made up of existing MCU heroes like Shang-Chi, Spider-Man, Moon Knight, and Blade, and an adaptation could be a good Midnight Sons offshoot further down the road, should Marvel really want to make Daredevil a team player again.
