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SPOILER ALERT: This article contains major spoilers for the premiere of “Daredevil: Born Again,” now streaming on Disney+.
“Daredevil” is back, and the “Born Again” revival is certainly starting off with a bang.
After being gone for nearly seven years, “Daredevil: Born Again” brings Charlie Cox’s Man Without Fear to the normally family-friendly Disney+, without losing any of the blood or brutality of the original Netflix series. With its rebirth, the show’s premiere also says goodbye to one of its main characters in typical violent fashion.
Things start off a little too happy in the “Born Again” premiere: Matt Murdock (Cox), Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) and Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) are celebrating the success of their law practice at Josie’s Bar. Foggy is chatting up assistant D.A. Kirsten McDuffie (Nikki M. James) while Matt and Karen have their own flirtatious banter.
However, things quickly take a dark turn when sharpshooter Benjamin “Dex” Poindexter (Wilson Bethel), now going by his comic-book moniker Bullseye, returns for revenge. One of Foggy’s clients frantically calls him and apologizes for selling him out to Bullseye, who takes aim at Foggy through a sniper rifle as he exits Josie’s. Bullseye shoots Foggy in the chest and nearly takes out Karen, but Matt, in his new Daredevil costume, swoops in and battles the killer.
After an intense, one-shot fight scene through Josie’s Bar, Matt and Bullseye make their way to the roof, while Matt is covered in daggers and using his super-senses to listen to Foggy’s fading heartbeat. As Foggy dies, rage overcomes Matt and he throws Bullseye from the roof onto the street below, breaking Daredevil’s no-killing rule. However, Bullseye’s reinforced skeleton (which was strengthened after he was paralyzed in the “Daredevil” Season 3 finale) allows him to survive the fall.
Foggy’s death will certainly stun “Daredevil” fans, and it sets the tone for the rest of the series and Matt’s life going forward.
“It’s really hard — it’s sad,” Cox told Variety about shooting Foggy’s death scene. “The good news is that it’s got to be iconic. We’re back with a new show, so you’ve got to be big, brave and bold. You’ve got to do something different and shake things up. So, likely, there has to be a casualty, and sadly it is Foggy. It’s devastating on a personal level and for the characters. I always think about Foggy Nelson as being kind of the heartbeat of the MCU. We lose a lot.”
Originally, Foggy’s death took place off-screen, but showrunner Dario Scardapane said: “If something this earth-shattering is going to happen, we have to feel it. This is more than an inciting incident. This is an earthquake. This has ripple effects through the entire story.”
Scardapane also revealed that Cox made the key decision for Matt to be able to hear Foggy’s heartbeat as it grew fainter and stopped.
After a few drafts of them having written the sequence, “Charlie came in and was like, ‘What if I can hear his heartbeat the entire time?'” Scarpane recalled. “‘Done’ — I went back home, and busted that out, because that was a brilliant idea.”
After Bullseye kills Foggy, the show then jumps ahead one year. Matt has hung up his Daredevil horns, lost touch with Karen and still mourns Foggy’s death.
“It breaks our heart,” said director Aaron Moorhead. “The reason that it’s so violent is that the violence is grotesque and has real consequences. If there’s going to be two acts of violence, Foggy’s death and then Matt trying to kill someone and crossing this line, the grief needs to ripple out — not through the end of the episode, but forever. This is the question that he now has to grapple with: how to go on as a person that no longer believes, as a Catholic superhero, he’s worthy of God’s grace.”
Elsewhere, Bullseye is on trial for Foggy’s murder, while New York City welcomes Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), a.k.a. the not-quite-reformed Kingpin, as its new mayor. One of Fisk’s first initiatives is to crack down on vigilante crime-fighting, and he meets Matt at a diner to dissuade him from returning as Daredevil. But at the end of the two-part premiere, Matt seems ready to bring back the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, as he viciously takes down some thugs looking to spook a key witness for one of his clients.
The original “Daredevil” was known for its one-take action sequences, and the “Born Again” premiere is no exception. Matt and Bullseye brutally fight their way through Josie’s Bar as smoke floods the room and customers hastily exit. They toss barstools, knock each other through doors and exchange billy-club and knife throws as the action doesn’t let up. The entire time, the camera is locked in on the two fighters, and doesn’t miss a second of the action with a cut. There’s even a moment when the camera moves behind a transparent sliding door — and all you see are Matt and Bullseye’s silhouettes before they crash through and keep fighting.
“It’s so complex. The way the camera was moving in that specific scene, relative to how we shot other scenes, was less frenetic and more on a track pushing in. It was a sense of impending doom,” Cox said. “Every department has to be impeccable for it to make it onto the screen. The scene in Episode 1 is long; it’s a big one.
“It’s also a very emotional scene, because of the nature of what’s just happened,” Cox continued. “It was really fun to shoot, and we had lots of rehearsal. I think we had a whole day, maybe even more than that, to do it. It was hard, but we knew what we were doing was worth it.”
“Daredevil: Born Again” streams Tuesdays on Disney+.
English (US) ·