Wilson Bethel is in the middle of making a lasagna when he joins our Zoom, but he promises to give me his undivided attention. As we’re discussing all things Daredevil: Born Again, a subject that’s near and dear to his heart, that pledge is well-kept — in fact, there are times when I worry about the lasagna cooking in his oven being neglected. Bethel is all-in on every subject that passes between us, from the dearth of pasta restaurants with generous portions in Los Angeles (“It’s why I make my own lasagna!”) to the newfound confidence of his swaggering serial murderer, Benjamin Poindexter.
It’s not hard to wonder where his passion comes from: The actor, alongside every actor from the original Daredevil, assumed that he’d never get the chance to finish Dex’s story after Netflix canceled the series. Bethel had scarcely completed Dex’s origins as Bullseye before the streamer pulled the plug. A revival seemed like a pipe dream — then, Marvel Studios made it a reality, bringing Charlie Cox’s eponymous vigilante back to life alongside his roster of colorful villains. Bullseye especially feels reborn in kind: He makes an explosive return in Season 2, luring a squad of anti-vigilante goons to a diner where he proceeds to put his perfect accuracy to fatal use. The deranged smile across his face is equal parts intimidating and, admittedly, a little infectious; per Bethel, that’s by design.
“This season, I get to have so much fun,” the actor tells Inverse. “It’s the best. And I love seeing Dex in that zone, too.”
It’s really the first time we get to see the character embrace all that he is, after the “f*cking torture” of his origins in Netflix’s Daredevil and his stint in survival mode in Born Again Season 1. That his version of “fun” includes so much cold-blooded murder is relatively easy to forgive, especially as Matt Murdock (Cox) tries, once again, to defeat the evil Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) with nonlethal force. It’s an internal struggle that has defined his creed as Daredevil — but with good people now paying the price for his inaction, it might be holding him back more than ever before.
Fortunately, Matt has a different devil on his shoulder when he’s paired up with Bullseye in Born Again’s latest episode. After numerous attempts, Dex manages to assassinate Wilson’s wife, Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer), which — in his words — balances the scales and atones for the murder of Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson). Matt, naturally, refuses to leave him behind; with this unlikely pair stuck together in Episode 5, Bethel speaks to Inverse about the messy dynamics that unite these characters, and the privileges of having unfinished business to explore.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
So I was scrolling on [X, formerly known as] Twitter this morning and came across a meme about Dex flirting with Matt — and then I realized that you made the meme.
[Laughs.] I should preface by saying I am the worst at [social media]. I use it maybe once or twice a year, and when I do, I probably use it like somebody who hasn’t used it in 10 years. But part of what’s so fun about being on a show like Daredevil is how engaged the fan base is. I [also] think that at this point, there’s a lot of subtle and not-so-subtle homoerotic vibes between Matt and Dex.
So true.
I think we just need to lean in, dude. We live in a Heated Rivalry world. We just need to lean in.
There’s very much a moment in Episode 4 where you guys are escaping in the tunnels and Matt pushes Dex against the wall, and he’s choking him… I was like, “Oh!”
Yeah! Bro, it’s not even the first time. We’ve been doing that. He’s been doing that sh*t a lot. But hey dude, that’s how Matt rolls, as we know… Honestly, he’s exhausted the female population. So at some point [he can] swim in different streams.
It also feels like you’re having more fun as Dex this season.
This season, I get to have so much fun. It’s the best. And I love seeing Dex in that zone, too. Obviously, this is a character that’s been f*cking tortured throughout multiple seasons of this show at various moments. And we’ve seen him at his absolute lowest lows. And so to get to see him in Season 2 of Born Again, f*cking living his best life… Dude, drinking his milkshake, and just killing everybody and having fun doing it. “Yes, girl, get it!”
He’s kind of thriving.
Yeah, he is thriving. And obviously, that’s in his own mind. He has this mission that he’s on: “Oh, if I can just kill Fisk, I can just balance these scales, then everything will be groovy. It doesn’t even matter.” And then even after the fact when he’s dying [in Episode 5], “Dude, all good. Let me die. I’m set now.” He’s at peace, dude. One of the things that I loved about getting to do this season was just getting to play with a lightness in his step and just seeing what it feels like to have Dex just sort of swaggering through the world without a care. It’s fun.
You’re also back with a vengeance in Episode 4 with that great diner scene. What is it like learning choreography for these sequences? Is it like riding a bike, or are Dex’s moves getting more complicated?
Yeah. It’s always complicated in the sense of there’s a lot to learn in terms of specific choreography. But at this point, it’s one of the things that I look forward to most about this show. There’s a lot of things I look forward to about doing this show, but certainly, the physicality of it and the stunt work is something that I love doing. I do feel comfortable doing it. So when I know that a scene like that is coming, I can’t wait to dive in and start working with the stunt team and figuring out how to make it as best as it can be.
The parallels between Bullseye and Daredevil feel a lot stronger this season. We see you return to the church, and you’re embracing these themes of balance and penance. It feels like he’s taken Daredevil’s mythos and turned it into something that works for him. Could you talk about subverting Dex’s copycat ways?
I don’t think there’s an element of it where he’s trying to emulate Daredevil in any way. I think his approach has landed him in this very particular, rigid ideology. His is one thing. Matt’s is obviously very much through the spectrum of religion, but I think you’re absolutely right that getting to see these two very different ideologies and worldviews collide, especially in Episode 5, is awesome. I love doing those scenes with Charlie. And I think from a character level, one of the things that makes this season fascinating is that Dex does have an almost... I’ve sort of been thinking about it [as] a righteous mission that, of course, has nothing to do with religion. But it has everything to do with Dex having, in some ways, a very limited point of view in the same way that religion can do that to somebody.
Those scenes in the church are obviously very appropriate when they’re discussing these ideologies and defining themselves in such clear terms. It’s beautiful writing in that whole episode, and the way that they keep flashing back to Foggy and Matt when they were young men... The conversation is really sort of between Dex’s morality and Foggy’s morality, and Matt is caught in the middle. And the way that episode is structured, the whole argument that it makes is that Foggy was sort of Matt’s moral backbone in a lot of ways. Even in that whole flashback sequence, Matt wasn’t the one who was walking the righteous path — Foggy was. And through that relationship, I think Foggy informed a lot of Matt’s worldview, probably. I’m sort of digressing a little bit, but I do think that’s an amazing episode, and getting to see those different points of view expounded on so gracefully, it was really cool both as a viewer and also as an actor to be part of that.
A few years ago you spoke about the privilege of aging with these characters, bringing your own lived experience into the role after taking some time away. How has that manifested for you, especially in Season 2?
It can be hard to put a specific finger on, but I will say that just seeing more life, being on the planet longer, deepening your experience of other people, is just helpful to, I think, the work that we do. That’s one of the beautiful things about this work as an actor. The more that you get to know yourself, the better you are at it. And then in conjunction, you also get to learn more about these characters that you’re playing, and that relationship builds over time as well. So the two, they end up being a little fused together. I think I continue to learn and be challenged by this character in really fascinating ways. He challenges me to think about myself and think about my relationship to myself in really complex ways, which has evolved and grown over time.
What’s been the biggest challenge wrestling with Dex?
That’s a good question. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a challenge, but I am always fighting — and I don’t mean fighting; I would say in general across the board, the writers and the producers of every season of this show that I’ve been part of have been extremely collaborative, and we very much share a general vision for the character. But the challenge is to continue deepening him. Anytime there’s something that feels like a cheap out, or it doesn’t feel fully right to the character, to me, the challenge is like, “OK, we’ve got this great, deep-layered character. How do we deepen him? How do we make him more complicated?” As long as I get the privilege of getting to play this character, that will always be my No. 1 job, just advocating for him to be the most dynamic version of Dex that we can have.
