Daredevil: Born Again Review - Marvel's Man Without Fear Is Back And Better Than Ever

"Daredevil: Born Again" is Disney+'s followup to the show "Daredevil," which Netflix released between 2015 and 2018. The series was a co-production with Marvel, but was canceled after its third season. Marvel said that the Man Without Fear would be back for a sequel series, this time on Disney+, but many thought the sequel couldn't possibly live up to the original, with its dark tone and high body count. It just didn't fit with Disney's kinder, gentler, family-friendly tone. Well, I'm happy to say the doubters are unequivocally wrong.

Disney has had a bit of a renaissance in the past couple of years, ushering in an era of harder, tougher properties on the Marvel side as well as the "Star Wars" side of their empire. That has set the stage for the revival of "Daredevil" and I'm here to tell you, on the heels of critics' positive reactions to the first two episodes of "Daredevil: Born Again," that it hasn't lost a step. While the story has gone through a big revision, requiring extensive reshoots after the first six episodes were filmed, that seems to have been for the best. What we're left with in the show's first season is truly outstanding television.

The story starts with a tragic incident that sees blind lawyer Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) hang up his alter ego as Daredevil. Though this could seem like a detriment to the show, it doesn't dampen its spirit, as Matt helps another costumed vigilante in peril with the power of his skills as a lawyer. Of course, the show is called "Daredevil: Born Again," so you can bet that Matt will eventually don his devil horns once more. In the meantime, he clashes with Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio), who had been away for awhile — if you've kept up with other shows in the Disney+ line-up, you have a rough idea of what he's been doing — but is now back and running for mayor (a role that makes him very much like our current president, and all the worse for it). The pair don't see eye to eye, as always, but now Fisk has even more legitimate resources at his disposal to ensure Matt suffers. It's an epic journey, and overall it's a triumph in every department.

In fact, this seems more like the long-awaited fourth season of "Daredevil" rather than the first season of a new show.; it picks up more or less where the third season left off. With the exception of Fisk's time on seasons of "Hawkeye" and "Echo" (and some well-placed "Ms. Marvel" references), allusions to the past in "Daredevil: Born Again" all come from prior seasons of "Daredevil" or "Punisher," shows that were originally on Netflix but have since come to Disney+. And while it doesn't hurt if you've never seen these shows, it certainly does help to have seen at least some of them, even if just to understand how dear Marvel stars like Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) and Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) are to Matt. 

However, the main thing that people who've seen "Daredevil" before will be worried about is whether the action has grown stale. No need to worry — the action is as brutal as ever, full of knife-throwing, head-crushing, bone-crushing grandeur. Of course, Daredevil does the majority of this, but Fisk and even Jon Bernthal's Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, get in on the action. These scenes are also shot in inventive and fun ways: in one episode, the action cuts back and forth between Daredevil and Fisk as they beat up different people. One takes down a serial killer, the other a man that has (supposedly) done him wrong. But despite these two individuals' vast differences, cutting between the two establishes just how similar the pair can be — and in the end, just how different. Inventive uses of film techniques like that make this an even more satisfying show, ensuring that we get the point of a scene without being hit over the head with it.

Overall the story does an excellent job of moving from point A to point B in a linear fashion, combining long-form storytelling with short bursts of other plotlines. And, in a nod to the way people get their news today, they even have a (fictional) program called "The BB Report" sprinkled in throughout the series, while having the woman responsible for that show, BB (Genneya Walton), appear in a few episodes. The few missteps I see are most likely because of all the cutting the show endured. For instance, Episode 5's storyline could have been worked more elegantly into the larger tale of a disintegrating city — but even that episode has its charms.

Plus, everyone on this show has come back at the top of their games. Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio are particularly good as their characters and slip back into them as if they stopped playing them yesterday, not several years ago. In terms of new characters, Margarita Levieva is great as Heather Glenn, Matt's therapist girlfriend, who doesn't agree with him when it comes to vigilantes; and Michael Gandolfini makes an impression as Fisk's protege Daniel Blake, someone who will do anything for his main man. There's not much more I can say about "Daredevil: Born Again" without spoiling something, so the best thing I can impart is simply this: watch this series! It's a rip-roaring good time.

The first two episodes of "Daredevil: Born Again" hit Disney+ on March 4, with new episodes unspooling weekly on Tuesdays.