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We’re all here today because Marvel messed up back in the early 2000s and sold its superheroes piecemeal to different film and media studios. Daredevil, the blind lawyer by day and vigilante by night, is one of those casualties, just like Spider-Man. Disney has done a decent job, however, at bringing them all together under one umbrella. Still, Daredevil‘s integration from Netflix into the MCU with Daredevil: Born Again was not a seamless weld.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Daredevil: Born Again is a bad series– it’s quite the opposite, even with just the first three episodes out. Prior to Born Again, Disney+ essentially butchered one central character to the Daredevil mythos, which would be the Kingpin or Wilson Fisk (complete with widespread fan backlash). This happened in the Hawkeye and Echo series (something we’ll touch upon later).
Now, with Daredevil: Born Again setting things straight again both for the titular hero and his main villain, Kingpin, as a continuation of the Netflix original, one of the most glaring pitfalls of the venture has been highlighted. Born Again is too good and too faithful to the Netflix original, that it will be hard to see how Daredevil‘s grounded and gritty characters will fit into the more casual MCU once the bigger capes and cosmic characters start piling on.
New York Has Become Too Crowded for the MCU
Daredevil: Born Again‘s story is kicked off with the Kingpin (Wilson Fisk) “turning over a new leaf” and deciding to run as a mayor for New York City. He won, of course, because people will still vote for candidates with criminal records (quite a timely parallel). As Mayor Wilson Fisk, one of his first mandates for New York City was outlawing vigilantes or people who dispense justice outside of the law.
But it’s really just the Kingpin legally trying to cap off his long-standing nemesis rivalry with Daredevil, because the criminal approach didn’t work. Right off the bat, you can see the cynical faithfulness to the original Netflix series. Sadly, the atmosphere starts falling apart once Wilson Fisk also mentions disdain for Spider-Man and includes him in the outlaw list.
From there on, the viewers are made well aware that this kind of New York is the very same one ravaged by Loki’s Chitauri army back in the very first Avengers movie. It’s also the same New York where the Hulk, Dr. Strange, Thor, and Iron Man made notable appearances to thwart off cosmic threats. The very same New York that couldn’t survive without superheroes and vigilantes.
Now a crime-lord-turned-mayor who doesn’t technically have superpowers is trying to keep literal gods and omnipotent tech geniuses out of his backyard, as if any ex-Avenger or superpowered villain could be stopped by regular cops or legal boundaries. How does that work?
Kingpin Trying to be a Street-Level Thanos Doesn’t Work When Daredevil Has Friends in High Places
What made Daredevil work in Netflix was that the stakes were high for Daredevil. He had no one else to turn to and must solve all of New York’s problems mostly by himself against armed goons and criminal masterminds. Now that he’s in the MCU and his dark version of New York has wedged itself in the MCU’s self-indulgent lore, the stakes have been lowered.
What’s stopping Daredevil from teaming up with Spider-Man, or the She-Hulk, or even Doctor Strange’s sentient cape as a backup against a corrupt mayor and his thugs? The counterpoint would be Kingpin also hiring his own superpowered heavy-hitters, but then the show will inevitably lose its signature grittiness, something that made the Netflix original a hit. It makes Kingpin less scary or less smart when he has to hire superpowered villains that aren’t scared of him.
Once Disney wedged Daredevil into the MCU, it became impossible to progress its storylines without turning it into an Avengers-lite given how many MCU superheroes operate in New York City. Disney could keep treating New York in Daredevil: Born Again as some kind of vacuum, which is even more questionable because Kingpin is well aware of the Avengers.
Daredevil Should’ve Stayed in a Vacuum
Disney might be trying to please everyone by both maintaining the tone and seriousness of the Netflix original while also integrating everything into the MCU. But fans are well aware of how poorly Disney introduced a street-level villain like Kingpin into the MCU back in Hawkeye and Echo.
In those two shows, the Kingpin was reduced to cartoon-level villain, easily squashed by super-spies and metahuman beings. The Kingpin in Hawkeye and Echo was a far cry from the memorable and imposing crime boss of the Netflix original, which isn’t ideal since he’s half of what made Daredevil so good as a refreshingly grounded superhero series.
While Daredevil could get away with interacting with the Avengers and metahumans because of his super-senses, he’s still a street-level hero who sometimes struggles with taking down cops and biker gangs. Both Kingpin and Daredevil clearly need an upgrade in tech or powers if they’re to be further integrated into the MCU.
This is more of a critique for the MCU itself in how it made the stakes too high, that the threats in its stories are almost cartoonish and nonexistent. Any iconic psychotic tantrum from the Kingpin becomes laughable in the face of cosmic and worldwide threats and something even the MCU version of Spider-Man could easily deal with in a side story of the day.
If Disney really wanted to continue the Daredevil legacy built by Netflix, an easy workaround could’ve been a separate universe where only street-level vigilantes exist and psychotic human threats are more palpable. Instead, I fear that Disney could also be using Daredevil: Born Again as another transition vehicle for its bigger superheroes. On a related note, when has ‘trying to have your cake and eating it too’ worked for a corporation?
