Summary
Daredevil: Born Againhas brought excitement, thrills, and intense gritty drama back to the MCU’s line-up. In the midst of major character deaths, Kingpin’s political rise to office, and Matthew Murdock’s courtroom dramas, showrunner Dario Scardapane has subtly introduced one of the more ingenious narrative tools that is helping the MCU to stay more grounded.
Netflix’sDardeviland its smallerDefendersuniverse always opted to keep its storylines as realistic as possible, rooting the Manhattan-centric shows in a sense of realism. Even though all of these series featured characters with extraordinary abilities, the origins of their powers were often explained away as freak mistakes of science. Jessica Jones underwent gene editing as a child, Kilgrave (The Purple Man) was exposed to a mutated virus, and Matt Murdock was blinded by chemicals in an accident.
These more personal origin stories provided a pleasant contrast to the MCU in Phases 2-3, as the saga continued to drift off into the fantastical, bizarre, alien, and magical, following thesuccesses of blockbusters hits likeThe Guardians of the Galaxy.The Netflix-MCU collaboration eventually fell apart. Since then, there has been nothing to counterbalance the tone of the MCU’s big-budgetadventures, constant global disasters, and Marvel’s continuing obsession with the multiverse in Phases 4-5. Films and TV shows likeAnt-Man: QuantumaniaandLokihave released to various amounts of success and failure, but it’s evident that the public has been overwhelmed by all these interdimensional escapades.
EnterDaredevil: Born Again,which has set an excellent tone for the rest of the MCU’s 2025 release schedule. The series, now streaming on Disney+, is reintroducing many of the realistic elements present in its initial run. Courtroom battles play out like typical high-stakes dramas and, since both Daredevil and Kingpin have laid down their darker sides for the time being, the foes have only done verbal battles over cups of coffee so far.BeforeAvengers: Doomsdayarrives in 2026and returns audiences to the universal, cosmic conflicts that have become intrinsically linked to the Marvel brand, Daredevil continues to do an excellent job of reminding viewers how the actions of these larger-than-life characters can affect real people.
Daredevil: Born Again’s BB Report Is A Quiet Stroke Of Creative Genius
BB Urich isBorn Again’sfresh-faced reporter. She is the niece of deceased reporter Ben Urich, who came extremely close to uncovering Wilson Fisk’s criminal empire inDaredevilSeason 1. Fisk murders Urich, not just for meddling in his affairs, but out of revenge for contacting his mother at a nursing home. It seems strange, then, that Fisk would accept the offer of an interview from his victim’s niece in Episode 2, “Optics”. Or that he would choose a web news series like The BB Report over other major news outlets to promotehis ascendancy to Mayor of New York. However, Kingpin is often adept at understanding the mood of the public, and he sees the benefit of BB’s unique ability to reach out to ordinary people. More importantly than that, he understands what it can bring to his image as a rising man of the people.
The host of The BB Report spends her time walking around the streets of New York interviewing regular folk. The reporter covered much of the mayoral race and the moments leading up to the mayoral debate, gauging voters' reactions to Fisk as a candidate. One of them spoke out against the former criminal:
“He’s an animal. That sort of person brings out the worst in other people as well.”
Another voice dismissed concerns about Fisk’s personal history:
“Politicians, criminals, they’re all the same breed man.”
The BB Report is actively engaging in something that the MCU hasn’t seen for a long time. It has demonstrated how the actions of those like Murdoch and Fisk can affect the lives of everyday people. So many Marvel films in the last few years have abstractly portrayed threats to Earth or other worlds as a series of collapsing CGI buildings, epic fist-throwing battles, orthreads of space-time slowly unraveling. Here, in a simple but effective way, audiences understand more than ever how citizens of the MCU feel about vigilantism. By gauging their reaction, it makes them feel less like pieces moving around on a chess board, or unfortunate collateral. The city’s residents feel more like real human beings, which provides the show with greater stakes and weight.
On the whole, The BB Report is helpingDaredevil: Born Againstand out as one of the freshest breaths of air the MCU has seen in a while.
Daredevil: Born Again Has Backup
Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, which also features Charlie Cox’s Daredevil, is another great example of street-level storytelling.
Another rising MCU success on the animation scene isYour Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man(2025). The show broke away from the MCU to have a much more stripped-back involvement in the wider cinematic universe.
Instead of Spider-Man being headed up by world-famous star Tom Holland, or crossing over with various other past live-action portrayals of Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield, the TV series has managed to keep things relatively simple. In fact, it mirrors the tone that Holland’s next trilogy of films aims to capture. That of a regular, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, laid bare of all his Tony Stark gadgets and Thanos-level threats, returning to what made Peter Parker so special in the first place: he’s just a regular kid from Queens. It also gives the animated series a huge amount of freedom and scope for what it can realize in terms of its story going forward. A luxury that every MCU writer is sorely lacking as the main timeline’s canon becomes ever more expansive and complex. As a result,Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Manis one of the only current Disney projects to be experimenting with Marvel’s characters so liberally.
Daredevil, voiced by the live-action actor Charlie Cox, even goes toe-to-toe with Spidey in Episode 6 of the animated series. For now, these two masked New York vigilantes will continue to strengthen Marvel’s recent efforts to distance their image from overcomplicated story arcs, helping the MCU get back to basics.
