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[COLUMN] Daredevil: Born Again Lacks Faith and Insists on Certainty | by Darren Mooney
🕑 Added 2025-03-21 14:00:19 +0000 UTC
Note: This piece contains spoilers for Born Again, up until the fourth episode, which streamed this week on Disney+.
What an adaptation changes is often as revealing as what it chooses to keep.
Daredevil: Born Again draws from a wide variety of sources. Wilson Fisk’s (Vincent D’Onofrio) tenure as Mayor of New York, along with Matt Murdock’s (Charlie Cox) retirement from his role as Daredevil, is lifted from Chip Zdarsky and Marco Checchetto’s recent run. Fisk’s campaign and the villain Muse (Hunter Doohan) come from Charles Soule and Ron Garney’s preceding run. And the Hector Ayala (Kamar de los Reyes) story is adapted from Brian Michael Bendis and Manuel Gutierrez’s “Trial of the Century” arc.
There are obviously other influences in there as well. Kirsten McDuffie (Nikki M. James) was created by Mark Waid and Paolo Rivera, and it seems like Karen Page’s (Deborah Ann Woll) move to San Francisco is also an allusion to Daredevil’s history with that city. However, those are the big influences, to the point that Zdarsky has joked about receiving a cheque for his contributions to the story underpinning Born Again.
However, the show makes a number of significant changes in how it executes those story beats, and it’s interesting to explore why it does that. There are plenty of reasons to change a story in translating it from panel to screen. For example, costumes that look great on the panel and animation may not look good in live action. It might also be necessary to simplify the narrative flow, move some details around, and shift the emphasis to play to the strengths of a different medium.
The biggest changes that Born Again makes in adapting these plots for the screen concerns the characterization of Matt Murdock. In Zdarsky and Checchetto’s recent run, Matt’s retirement is prompted by a disastrous error in judgment. On patrol, Matt is tired. While taking down a suspect during a routine crime, Matt miscalculates the strength of his blow. This results in the death of the young man. This weighs on Matt’s conscience, causing him to give up the cowl.
It's a genuinely bold choice, and one of the most compelling features of Zdarsky and Checchetto’s extended run is that they refuse to exonerate Matt. There is no easy or convenient revelation that this was some secret plot by Wilson Fisk to undermine Matt. The dead man is not miraculously resurrected. Matt has to live with the fact that, while doing something that was always inherently reckless and dangerous, he made a split-second error in judgment, and a person died.
Born Again opts to rewrite the terms of Matt’s retirement. Matt retires after the murder of his close friend Foggy Nelson (Eldon Henson) by the assassin Benjamin Poindexter (Wilson Bethel). Matt fails to save Foggy, and then throws Poindexter off the roof, smashing him into the pavement. However, because Poindexter is the popular comic book character Bullseye, Matt doesn’t actually kill Poindexter. He beats him no more or no less seriously than he has ever beaten Wilson Fisk.
This is a strange choice, because it completely reworks Matt’s decision to retire from being Daredevil. Indeed, while Zdarsky and Checchetto framed Matt’s retirement as a sort of justified penance, Born Again frames it as a selfish indulgence. Karen Page refuses to speak with Matt after he retires, acting as if it is a completely unreasonable thing to do. Indeed, Hell’s Kitchen seems to call out for a vigilante. There is no reason for Matt to have stopped. It makes no logical sense.
This lack of sense is perhaps understandable, given that the entire opening sequence of Born Again was added in reshoots after six episodes of the show had been completed. Given that Poindexter was only added to the show in reshoots, it seems likely that Matt’s retirement (which was seemingly always part of the show) was motivated by different factors in the original version of Born Again. The version that plays out on the released show has been clumsily stitched together.
Over a cup of coffee with Fisk, Matt states that “a line was crossed”, which is a very strange way of framing his decision to retire. Surely, Foggy’s death just proves that Hell’s Kitchen needs more vigilantes? A later confrontation between Matt and the vigilante Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), who was seemingly also a late addition to the show, is similarly logically fuzzy. The argument seems to be that Matt is just really sad that he lost his best friend, but there are clumsy gestures at other ideas.
“You hate yourself, because it’s eating you up and you ain’t done a goddamn thing about it,” Frank yells at Matt. “You know you didn’t do a goddamn thing.” Frank seems to be suggesting that Matt might have retired because he didn’t kill Poindexter, even though he literally threw the assassin off a roof onto the pavement. “I ran him down,” Matt protests. “I did what I had to do, and I let the system take care of the rest.” Matt repeats, “He got life.” It is very strange.
There are similarly weird choices made in the show’s adaptation of “Trial of the Century.” In the comic, Matt uses Hector’s trial as an egocentric way to put his own superhero persona on trial. It is reckless and self-serving, using Hector to try the very concept of a vigilante. Matt’s driven to defend himself, not his client. The story ends with Matt’s arrogance and selfishness getting Hector convicted, and Hector is shot while fleeing arrest, as a direct consequence of Matt’s selfishness.
In contrast, Born Again exonerates both Matt and Hector. Hector is found not guilty by a jury of his peers. He is released. Matt doesn’t destroy Hector’s life, he saves it. Hector is then murdered extrajudicially by a member of a secret organization within the New York City Police Department who styles themselves after the Punisher, one of the show’s genuinely provocative choices. However, as with Matt’s retirement, the reworking of the story is designed to ensure that Matt remains “likable.”
Bendis’ extended run on Daredevil is built around the idea that Matt is having a nervous breakdown and engaging in self-destructive behavior that is actively harmful to the people around him. This is a recurring motif in Daredevil comics. Under Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark, Matt ends up leading a cult of undead ninja assassins because it is easier than dealing with the mess that he has made of his life. Matt is a deeply ambiguous character, a superhero who makes mistakes and has errors in judgment.
This is what makes Matt Murdock so interesting as a character and Daredevil so fascinating as a franchise. Matt is a character who is allowed to make mistakes and to suffer the consequences of those mistakes. Because Daredevil is a less marketable brand than, say, Spider-Man or the X-Men, Marvel could historically afford to take risks in terms of how Matt was characterized and written. Matt could be unsympathetic. Matt could be unpleasant. Matt could be reckless.
Even on Netflix, Matt Murdock was allowed to be ambiguous. Much of the tension of the first season of Daredevil arose from the recurring sense that Matt was more interested in justifying his violent impulses than he was in pursuing any notion of justice. The series leaned hard into the contradictions of Matt Murdock. He was a Catholic who dressed up as a devil. He was a defence lawyer who operated as a vigilante punishing the accused.
These contradictions and paradoxes are central to the character. Writer and artist Frank Miller is credited with emphasizing Matt’s Catholicism, arguing, “I decided [Daredevil] had to be a Catholic because only a Catholic could be a vigilante and an attorney at the same time.” Matt’s character is built around very Catholic notions like doubt and faith. There is no certainty, no fate, no predestination. Matt is constantly lost, and having to find his way out of the darkness.
Born Again sands down so much of what makes Matt Murdock and Daredevil unique within the framework of superhero storytelling. There is a sense that is because the show is perhaps uncomfortable raising broader questions about the concept of vigilantism and extrajudicial violence. After all, in moving from Netflix to Disney+, Matt Murdock is now part of the larger tapestry of a shared universe built around the assumption that superheroes are an unqualified good.
Born Again features Wilson Fisk waging a war against the vigilantes in New York City, another plot point lifted from Zdarsky and Checchetto’s run. “These vigilantes are a threat to any society based on the rule of law,” Fisk insists. “These vigilantes, they are not heroes.” It seems like Born Again is very anxious to avoid giving Fisk any credible support for that argument, and so is afraid to have Matt make mistakes or miscalculations.
Instead, Born Again consistently argues that these masked vigilantes are a necessity for the safety and security of the city. Asked to justify what he does, Hector insists, “The people need a hero.” In examination, Matt observes that Hector “could have just walked away, ignored the problem.” In contrast, Hector insists that he simply does not have that ability within his character, arguing, “It’s who I am. It’s a calling. I didn’t choose it. It chose me.”
In the source comic, when Matt puts the concept of vigilantism on trial through the proxy of Hector, he loses; the jury rejects his arguments. In Born Again, the jury embraces them. This is very true to the narrative rhythms of a Marvel Studios project, where the protagonist will experience a second act setback and, rather than learning to evolve or change themselves to overcome that obstacle, they will merely insist that they are correct and the narrative will affirm them.
There is a sense in which Born Again is not really about Matt Murdock, and instead Matt Murdock serves as a proxy for the existential anxieties of the larger studio, in much the same way that the “what now?” midlife crises of movies like Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder and Eternals tapped into the mood of a company looking for a direction after the triumph of Avengers: Endgame.
Marvel Studios is in a somewhat precarious position, following the underwhelming box office results for The Marvels and Captain America: Brave New World, so there is no longer any room for doubt. Born Again does not have the luxury of questioning its central superhero or the idea of superheroes, as the entire brand of the company depends on the belief that superheroes are essential. To introduce any doubt – no matter how Catholic – is to risk undermining the enterprise.
Born Again leaves no room for ambiguity or uncertainty. Matt cannot be the compelling flawed character that he was in the comics or even during the Netflix show. Matt’s break from superheroism cannot be anything that the narrative entertains as a viable or credible choice. The jury cannot be out. There is too much riding on Born Again to let anything remain a matter of faith.
Comments
Darren Mooney
I think it's a phenomenal run, having re-read it on my break. Well, I think it's a phenomenal run to a point (the surprisingly effective crossover "Devil's Reign") and then it has a somewhat rushed and clumsy second act that doesn't quite cohere involving the Hand. (The Hand are fascinating, because they're so core to Daredevil, but also so difficult to get right - so many of the bad "Daredevil" comics runs suffer for getting hung up on "Hand stuff." Arguably including the second season of the show and "The Defenders.")
Darren Mooney
I think it's also the fact that we've already done the "Matt really wanted to kill a guy" stuff before, so it's real "shit or get off the pot" time, narratively speaking.
Rick Lippini
I’m with Darren on that one. He should have killed him. I read him pushing Dex off the ledge as him being so wracked with grief he didn’t care if he lived or died, but I wanted to see him lost in his rage beating him to death. Fake his death later on and bring him back if you want, but I really thought that his death should have impacted him foundationally. I still consider MY take as headcanon, but Bullseye’s death would have scared him more than anything and cemented his belief that daredevil should no longer exist. Would also be something that would more believably drive a wedge between him and Karen.
William Alexander
Great article! Darren's description of the comic run makes it sound very compelling. Daredevil accidentally killing someone while tired and overworked seems like something that could reasonably happen and that would weigh on his soul while not going overly grimdark. As I'm recently replaying Blasphemous, a very medieval Catholic game where guilt is an incorporated mechanic and quest givers include a maiden pierced by six swords and a young man with a old face in his chest that gradually emerges from its host, I have to say that Catholic guilt leads to some great art even if it isn't psychologically very healthy.
Dr. Judge, Private Eye
Personally I see it as: he WANTED to kill Bullseye, he just failed to. That doesn't make his intent any more pure, "Do they give out Nobel Prizes for ATTEMPTED chemistry, I mean REALLY?" after all. So he KNOWS that he wanted Bullseye dead, and has to reckon with the city, with Karen, with Frank, even, NOT knowing that. It's what made the interaction with Castle so raw: Murdock knows there's less and less difference between them.
Dr. Judge, Private Eye
I have to say: I think this article misses a major point and it's at the root of the much talked about "death of subtlety" that's always trotted out as new, but has been going on since "A Modest Proposal" was taken at face value. But here we are: because Matt Murdock didn't have a tearful soliloquy about "intention" and "action," and because we're all so plugged in to every moment and every change made behind-the-scenes: the assumption of Murdock's motivation is that it's "weak." Whereas I read Matt's retirement as: he wanted Bullseye dead, he TRIED to kill him and failed. So the rest of the city just seems him still abiding by his "no lethal force for any reason" coda, and still celebrates him. While he knows he crossed the Frank Castle line, at least in his own heart. Which is so much more Catholic than it gets credit for. I think we, as culture critics, sometimes get too into our own world where we know every moment of every show's development, but we ourselves are left to ascribe motive and reason, because the only thing that's allowed to be said is "we really wanted to make the best show possible!" and that's obviously BS. But we don't actually KNOW why the first episode was reshot, we don't know why it was rewritten. We often just graft our own assumptions onto it, but then refuse to meet a narrative that's trying not to spell everything out halfway. We praise media like Silent Hill 2, and rightly so, for leaving the motives of characters like James Sunderland up to the player to decide, but when a more mainstream genre fiction show tries for the same thing, we assume there's only one reading of it. And it's often the least charitable, because we don't want to get "fooled" by investing too much.
Rick Lippini
Not just the movie’s PR, I think they mention the villain escalation akin to an arms race pretty explicitly in one of the movies as well. There’s just so many elemental similarities for both of those characters that drawing inspiration from one or the other isn’t shocking in the slightest to me.
Grey1
Which makes me think of Futurama's continuing lampshading explanations of why the show disappears for years... ^^
Grey1
It does follow the logic of Nolan's Batman, I say, knowing that mentioning Nolan means tripping on Darren's field. But seriously, I'm not sure if The Dark Knight's ending really supported the status quo of the third film, with Batman having disappeared for years. But I'd also suggest that audiences wouldn't pick up on the conceptual idea of "escalation", of supervillains manifesting just because a superhero exists, if it hadn't been discussed so prominently in the movie's PR, and if the film hadn't been such an inevitable topic (especially for audiences who love to publicly discuss their passions, and argue that their passion is to be taken seriously). So, in short, yeah, I can see Daredevil trying to echo an accepted line of argument for superhero retirement and succeeding just the same.
Grey1
That being said, If Bullseye's continuing existence leads to more Colin Farrell spliced into the show's footage, they absolutely made the right decision.
Grey1
Not having watched any of the seasons, I'd guess the dilemma was that they wanted to wrap up all the old stuff - have the surviving villain wrapped up at the same time as the best friend in a prologue, very efficient as you can't reshoot the entire season; but at the same time someone wanted to keep the famous toy in the box for potential further use. I mean, you don't write a character being thrown off a roof and have them survive. Did they ADR the "he survived" line?
LifeIsStrange
Honestly I find it refreshing to see a piece of media that isn't all hemming and hawing about the negative aspects of vigilantism and says "actually being a vigilante is a good thing" and with lots of people celebrating that Luigi guy as a hero it honestly feels very timely and appropriate. I also don't think it's a coincidence that we're getting yet another revival of Dexter later this year, as the idea of someone out there taking out the truly evil monsters of society and succeeding where the law has failed is pretty damn appealing. Whenever i'm watching a vigilante film I always hate it when someone else tries to guilt trip the main character about their vigilantism(the movie "Zero Tolerance" has a sequence like that)that just makes me want to reach in and slap those characters upside the head.
LifeIsStrange
Makes sense to me.
Rick Lippini
I read Matt’s decision to retire differently. I believe Matt sees Bullseye as a self inflicted escalation in crime because of Daredevil’s presence. Matt probably feels like he manifested or enabled something like Bullseye to exist because of Daredevil’s actions. His logical response to that would be to end the persona altogether, along with cutting off his relationship with Karen, who knows who Daredevil is (didnt she say HE ghosted her first?) but I admit I might be injecting too much ‘Batman’ into my theory.
