It took years for Marvel Studios to revive Daredevil, the flagship series in Netflix’s “Defenders” universe. But even before a reboot was in the works, Marvel executives knew they couldn’t abandon the cast. Charlie Cox, who played the eponymous anti-hero in Daredevil, is the definitive version of the character, at least in live-action. The same goes for Vincent D’Onofrio, who portrayed his arch-nemesis, Wilson Fisk. After Daredevil’s cancellation in 2018, the Marvel team wasn’t sure about folding the series into the MCU proper. But as executive producer Sana Amanat recently told Entertainment Weekly, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige had one condition for a Daredevil revival: “We just have to make sure it’s Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio.”
Cox and D’Onofrio were the first to make the jump from the Defenders-verse and into the MCU. After cameos in Spider-Man: No Way Home and more substantial roles in Marvel shows like She-Hulk and Echo, the adversaries will take center stage in Daredevil: Born Again. The new show might not have started off as a sequel to the Netflix original, but as Daredevil and Kingpin’s presence in the MCU grew, a straightforward revival felt “inevitable” — at least for Marvel’s head of TV, Brad Winderbaum.
