Charlie Cox has had a devil on his shoulder for the past decade. In 2015 the British actor took on the mantle of Marvel’s Daredevil, the comic-book powerhouse’s most existentially conflicted crime-fighter, whose Catholic faith is a guiding light in his battle against evil.
The series was cancelled in 2018 as part of an escalating rivalry between Netflix (which had greenlit Daredevil) and Marvel’s overlords at Disney, then gearing up to launch their own streaming service, which was to have a heavy Marvel element.
But now here Cox is again, reconnecting with a chapter of his life he thought closed forever. He does so with the new series Daredevil: Born Again, which marks the character’s official debut in the MCU (Daredevil’s alter ego, the blind lawyer Matt Murdock, having cameoed in several earlier Disney shows).
“When I received a phone call in 2018 saying that it was cancelled, from that moment onwards I fully believed it was over for good,” Cox says from New York, where he is seated alongside his costar Vincent D’Onofrio, who plays Daredevil’s Donald Trump-esque mortal enemy, Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin.
“I never, ever expected anything to come of it, until I received a phone call in 2020 from [MCU supremo] Kevin Feige. I was absolutely shocked and never expected it.”
Cox, an upbeat and matey presence, didn’t sit around moping when Daredevil was cancelled. Instead he moved on to star in the RTÉ crime drama Kin. It was a hugely impressive turn from the actor, who pulled off a near-perfect Dublin accent and whose anti-hero, Michael, served as the emotional centre of the series.
Michael also had a lot in common with Daredevil and Matt Murdock. Both Michael and Murdock are idealists haunted by their history of violence. If anything, the “Michaelness” of Murdock is even more pronounced as Daredevil returns, and we see Murdock struggle to process a terrible personal loss. In both cases Cox’s performance brings humanity to genre cliches about the sins of the past following you into the present day. The two characters have also had to work hard not to be defined by the hand fate has dealt them, Matt being blind and Michael having epilepsy.
[ Kin review: Dublin city is just a moody backdrop as gangsters bumble in the gloomOpens in new window ]
The similarities were obvious, then – to the point at which Cox wondered if he wanted to take on Michael. Did he have it in him to go to the same dark places he had explored as Matt Murdock? “When I read those scripts, the Kin scripts, you know, one of my concerns was, well, there’s a lot of similarities here.”
In the end, he decided to go for it. He was instantly drawn to Kin and saw in Michael someone he could bring to life.
“Obviously, he’s dealing with a medical issue, which has completely pulled the rug out from underneath him, confidence-wise, and there’s a lot of shame around that, which was fun to play with.
“But in terms of both Matt and Michael’s relationships to violence ... there’s a lot of similarities there. Sometimes that’s okay. I think it’s important, when those similarities are there, to draw upon them. Why not? And hope that there’s enough nuance from both characters that they appear to be different.”
Daredevil: Born Again arrives at a crucial moment for Marvel and Disney. The superhero genre is perceived as in a potentially terminal decline, and recent Marvel shows have been especially disappointing – Secret Invasion, for instance, from 2023, was downright dire. As one of Marvel’s most critically acclaimed creations, the pressure is on the new Daredevil to arrest the perceived collapse in quality and cultural relevance.
The good news is that Cox and D’Onofrio are just as impressive as when the original Daredevil aired on Netflix. Born Again re-creates the grittiness and tight focus of the original Daredevil, which was more concerned with criminal goings-on in Hell’s Kitchen, in New York, than with cosmic battles between good and evil.
The reboot has not been plain sailing. Born Again was beset by behind-the-scenes upheavals that saw Marvel scrap the bones of six already-filmed episodes and start again. One point of contention was that, in the original script, Murdock did not don his Daredevil suit for a full six episodes. Unhappy, Marvel drafted in Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, who had worked on the MCU dramas Moon Knight and Loki, to overhaul the plot and ensure greater continuity with Netflix’s Daredevil.
“It’s important to clarify that the shift that was made midway through shooting was a collaborative decision. We’re very lucky to have bosses, partners at Marvel, who [are open to fresh ideas]. I applaud them for trying something different,” says Cox.
Once filming got under way it became clear that, for the new Daredevil to succeed, it would have to tie in to the three Netflix seasons, says D’Onofrio, an esteemed character actor known for performances in Full Metal Jacket, Men in Black and Jurassic Park: Lost World.
“We realised pretty early on that we had to have strong conviction when it came to keeping the show attached to the original. And as far as Justin and Aaron – we were so happy when we heard we were going to get them.”
The dynamic between Cox and D’Onofrio is one of the best things about the new Daredevil. Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk are mirror images of each other – underdogs who have used violence to make their way through the world and who have grasped, possibly too late, that they have sold their souls to get where they are.
The difference is that, where the tortured Murdock is in denial about his past, Fisk embraces his by embarking on a new career as a populist politician. Physically imposing, full of New York swagger and willing to lie to get ahead: the Donald Trump parallels are obvious. But for D’Onofrio the driving motivation was to do right by fans of Kingpin.
“It helps our enthusiasm. It inspires us to do a good job,” he says.
Daredevil: Born Again won’t rescue the MCU single-handedly: the challenges facing a studio that has become a byword for soulless CGI and mindless destruction are too great for any one series to rectify. But it is a worthy follow-up to the original Daredevil, and its appeal will surely not be limited to comic-book diehards.
It’s about a broken man tortured by his brutal past and trying to do right in a world where good and evil can too often look like the same thing. It’s a compelling story – and, as he was in Kin, Cox is the perfect actor to tell it.
Daredevil: Born Again is on Disney+ from Wednesday, March 5th
