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Hell’s Kitchen is about to get a lot more interesting. Disney+’s Daredevil: Born Again is set to bring Netflix’s version of the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen fully into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, marking one of the most significant integrations of past Marvel properties into the mainline MCU. Charlie Cox returns as Matt Murdock, Vincent D’Onofrio is back as Wilson Fisk, and Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle is once again ready to bring his own brand of justice as the Punisher.
For years, the Marvel-Netflix era and the MCU felt like two completely separate worlds, despite early attempts to connect them. Now, Daredevil: Born Again serves as the biggest attempt yet to merge the two, and it might not stop there. Marvel’s head of television, Brad Winderbaum, recently addressed the lingering question about the rest of the Defenders cast making their way into the MCU, in a conversation with Entertainment Weekly.
“I can’t say much, but I’ll tell you that it’s so exciting to be able to play in that sandbox,” Winderbaum said. “Obviously we don’t have the unlimited storytelling resources like a comic book. If you can draw it, you can do it. It’s dealing with actors and time and the massive scale of production in order to build a cinematic universe, especially on television. But I can just say that all those variables taken into account, it is certainly something that is creatively extremely exciting and that we are very much exploring.”
Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter), Luke Cage (Mike Colter), and Iron Fist (Finn Jones) each had their own shows before joining forces with Daredevil in Netflix’s The Defenders. That crossover event, released in 2017, brought together street-level heroes to battle The Hand, a ninja cult that used Elektra Natchios (Elodie Yung) as a weapon of destruction. The storyline ended with Daredevil and Elektra seemingly perishing under a collapsed building, but as later seasons revealed, Matt Murdock survived. Though each hero continued their own storylines in separate seasons, The Defenders itself remained a one-off event.
The potential for these characters to return in Daredevil: Born Again or future MCU projects is massive. The Defenders represent a street-level perspective that the MCU has largely overlooked in favour of cosmic and multiversal threats. With Kingpin reestablishing his grip on New York and Daredevil set to confront him once again, there’s an opportunity to reintroduce characters like Jessica Jones and Luke Cage in a way that strengthens the MCU’s grounded storytelling.
Daredevil: Born Again is set to debut on Disney+ on 4 March, kicking off what could be the next chapter for Marvel’s street-level heroes. With season two already in pre-production, the future of Daredevil and his allies in the MCU is only beginning to unfold.
Natalie is a big fan of anything related to movies, TV shows, and anime — you name it. When she’s not reading or being a dedicated cinephile, she’s probably playing gacha and tabletop games, or daydreaming of Caleb from Love and Deepspace.
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Kevin Low
