TV Talk: ‘Born Again’ picks up Daredevil’s story, brings it to Disney+

Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

Before the arrival of Disney+ in 2019, Disney licensed some of its Marvel characters to Netflix for series that originally streamed 2015-18, including “Jessica Jones,” “Luke Cage,” “Iron Fist,” “Defenders,” “The Punisher” and “Daredevil,” probably the most popular of the lot. (It’s possible Disney+ will reactivate some of those other titles or characters in the future, too.)

With Disney clawing back its rights to these Marvel characters, Disney+ will be the home to sequel series “Daredevil: Born Again,” streaming its first two episodes at 9 p.m. March 4, with actor Charlie Cox reprising his role as blind New York lawyer Matt Murdock (AKA Daredevil). (The subsequent seven episodes comprising the show’s first season will stream Tuesdays at 9 through April 22; a second season begins production soon.)

But Marvel hasn’t had an easy path getting to this point.

Just as the recent “Captain America: Brave New World” underwent a raft of re-shoots, “Daredevil: Born Again” filmed at least six of nine episodes before Marvel execs decided to throw much of it out and start over with a new showrunner.

That resulted in the return of three characters from the Netflix series that were not originally in Disney+’s take on “Daredevil”: Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) and Benjamin “Dex” Poindexter (Wilson Bethel). Through the first two episodes made available for preview, these three returning characters figure prominently initially in episode one and do not appear in episode two.

Additional returning characters include Vanessa Fisk (Ayelet Zurer) and Frank Castle/Punisher (Jon Bernthal).

Tonally, “Daredevil: Born Again” seems closer to Max’s “The Penguin” than past Disney+ Marvel efforts – darker, more violent — with a greater emphasis on character and relationship building and a willingness to wring drama out of intense verbal confrontations and not just fight scenes as demonstrated in the “Born Again” trailer.

“I was raised to believe in grace,” Murdock tells Kingpin in an enjoyably intense diner conversation. “If you say you’re a new man, I say, ‘Fine.’ But I was also raised to believe in retribution. So if you step out of line, I will be there.”

After the premiere episode’s prologue, the story flashes forward one year as Murdock has given up his vigilante ways and villainous Kingpin/Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), now claiming to be reformed, runs for mayor of New York.

The first episode explores attitudes toward vigilantes like Daredevil and White Tiger with a retiring cop complaining, “We get sued, they get cheered.” His colleague, replies, “The way I see it, the vigilantes are just like us: Some are stand-up human beings worthy of the gig, others are just power tripping (jerks).”

During a Disney virtual press conference for “Daredevil: Born Again” in late February, Cox said the post-prologue story picks up after Murdock suffers a trauma.

“That has meant that he has had to rethink and refine his identity in a way that is probably more profound than we have seen before,” Cox said. “He ends up going down a path, which is best described as a band-aid that will have to be ripped off slowly and painfully. But for fans of the original show, it’s the same Matt Murdock, just influenced by his experiences.”

Cox notes “Born Again” puts Daredevil and Kingpin in the same scene together earlier in the season than in the past.

“He still bugs me,” D’Onofrio said, to laughs from his colleagues, of Kingpin’s reaction to Daredevil. “We’re trying to live in the daylight, the two of is. We’re broken men. We have that in common. … You can’t put us in the same scene a lot because it’s not as powerful if you do that, but it’s so good when you do. It’s good for us as actors. It’s great for the story. It always means something. It’s either the beginning of something or the end of something or both sometimes.”

“Born Again” showrunner Dario Scardapane (“The Punisher”) said “Daredevil” stories are a mix of heart, muscle and humanity.

“Both (Daredevil and Kingpin) struggle with their dark passenger, but you always try to find that humanity inside a heightened world with action that’s trying to reset the bar for television,” Scardapane said. “We want to do high-octane action with moments of depth of character, and we want (Daredevil and Kingpin) grinding off each other from across the city.”