A lot has been written and discussed about the Frankenstein approach Marvel took to Daredevil: Born Again Season 1, jamming together an initial take not deemed worthy of the Daredevil legacy with new footage and writing from incoming showrunner Dario Scardapane and lead directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. The result, surprisingly, was easily one of the best seasons of TV Marvel has produced so far in the Disney+ era, so there was every reason to believe that the aforementioned trio taking sole control of Season 2 would be cause to celebrate.
Unfortunately, it’s not. While Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 does sport some great performances as usual, particularly from stars Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio, and has a killer, game-changing finale that that will have Marvel fans shrieking with delight, the majority of the season is a drag, playing to the worst impulses of the Marvel/Netflix era with grueling run times, awkward dialogue, and repetitive themes we’ve played out over the course of multiple seasons and series. More than once while watching the season – all eight episodes were provided for critics – I wondered whether the initial, scuttled approach to the season was the good part of Born Again Season 1, not what was added into the rejiggered, finished product.
To take a step back, Born Again doesn’t waste a lot of time jumping into the action, particularly because this is technically the second half of the first season, and is finishing off the Mayor Fisk storyline. When we last left our heroes, Fisk (D’Onofrio) had put New York under martial law, using the Anti-Vigilante Task Force (AVTF) as his enforcers, free of any sort of oversight other than his own. If you saw shades of President Trump in the first season of the series, the comparisons here – and AVTF to ICE – are impossible to ignore, down to them labeling whoever they want vigilantes including nurses and bodega owners, rounding them up, disappearing them, and throwing them in cages.
The season isn’t particularly subtle about the parallels to our current situation in America, but it’s also not particularly interested in commenting on it much other than “what if a guy in a devil suit wailed on them a lot?” There’s a satisfaction there, to be sure, seeing someone physically stand up to the neo-gestapo who have invaded American cities IRL. But there also aren’t a lot of applicable takeaways there, since most of us aren’t a blind lawyer by day, vigilante by night.
Therein lies a second big hiccup with the second season: Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) is in hiding, presumed dead, and therefore the episodes lose the juggling act of law drama and superhero drama that anchored the first season… He’s now Daredevil full time. In fact, to take it a step further, a relatively non-conflicted Daredevil – he’s more sure of his actions this season than ever before – often steps to the back of the ever-expanding cast of characters. One electrifying aspect of the first season was that even though Daredevil and Kingpin spent so much time apart, you could always feel the connection between the two, inexorably pulling back to each other. You get that it fits and starts here, including during the best fight in the season and during that sizzling finale. But mostly Matt is content to go out, punch some guys, then go back home.
That leaves a lot of the dramatic, and overdone “should heroes kill” arc on the shoulders of Matt’s now full-on girlfriend Karen Page (Debroah Ann Woll). It’s nice to see her back in the spotlight, and Woll knows how to make the most of a role she’s played for over a decade. But again, because they’re in hiding, for the majority of the season she’s either hanging around in the dilapidated apartment Karen and Matt are using as their vigilante love nest, or wandering the city in wigs that look like they were found in a box marked “Alias Season 2, Do Not Remove.”
…Not to confuse comic book fans with a reference to Alias, the Jennifer Garner TV series, instead of the comic book series that spawned Jessica Jones… Because Krysten Ritter is back in the role she played for three seasons on Netflix, as well. While Ritter seems game for the return, she holds a similar place the absent Jon Bernthal held as Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, in Season 1. AKA, glorified guest star, and frankly, Jess deserves better, and so does Ritter. Perhaps it was a matter of scheduling, but absent a very fun team-up fight scene, Jessica Jones mostly wanders in and out randomly, and is handed some of the most leaden exposition in the season. Here’s hoping her return is lauded enough that we get another season of Jessica Jones, because it’s fun to have her back – but perhaps not like this.
If this sounds overly negative, it’s because Daredevil: Born Again traded the brisk, go-for-broke pace of Season 1 for a “more of an eight episode movie” pace of your typical streaming show. That means that, for example, Margarita Levieva as therapist Heather Glenn is pretty much stuck in the same position she was in when we left her last season, given a slow turn over eight hours that anyone can feel coming from a mile away. Characters full of promise like youth reporter BB Urich (Genneya Walton) and deputy mayor Daniel Blake (Michael Gandolfini) spin their wheels, while between Fisk’s enforcer Buck Cashman (Arty Froushan) and Matt’s investigator Cherry (Clark Johnson), the show often has more characters than it knows what to do with. And the worst crime of all continues to be squandering the great Tony Dalton as Jack Duquesne / Swordsman, who has even less of a special guest star role than Ritter and is given even duller dialogue. And the less said about Elden Henson’s return as Foggy Nelson, the better, in an episode that mixes multiple timelines and flashbacks in a way that is borderline nonsensical.
So what does work? Thankfully, some of the new cast is having fun in the middle of the dour seriousness. Matthew Lillard is an absolute hoot as Mr. Charles, a mysterious CIA agent who tends to turn up in the wrong place at the right time like a devious Cheshire Cat. And Lili Taylor is semi-hilariously for New York dwellers essentially playing Kathy Hochul, the real governor of New York, though given a different name. She also helps lead to the most fascinating thread of the season, something that comes directly from the comics… Wilson Fisk may be the Kingpin of New York, but it’s a big world out there, and when he’s tangling above his paygrade finds he’s out of his league.
The show is also very well shot – all credit to the cinematographers and lighting team here – featuring some beautiful New York City footage, and often some fun with lighting, particularly when it comes to the diabolical anti-Daredevil in Wilson Bethel’s Bullseye.
But overall, Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 is a big step backwards. It’ll still be pleasing to watch for fans who have followed along since the initial Netflix seasons, but where Born Again truly did feel like it brought new life to the franchise, this second season is stuck in the same old mode, looking backwards rather than looking forwards. Given the intriguing place the season ends up, and that the team is still dealing with the fallout of what was set up in the original Season 1, here’s hoping there’s at least one more rebirth in the show when it comes to the currently filming third season. Otherwise, Marvel may as well read Born Again its last rites.
Daredevil: Born Again premieres new episodes weekly on Tuesday nights at 9pm ET / 6pm PT.
Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 premieres on Tuesday March 24 on Disney+ at 9pm ET / 6pm PT, with new episodes weekly except for the second week which has two episodes to make room for a Punisher one-shot special episode on May 12.
Here’s the full list of episodes in Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 with premiere dates:
- Tuesday, March 24, 2026: Daredevil: Born Again, Season 2, Episode 1, “The Northern Star”
- Tuesday, March 31, 2026: Daredevil: Born Again, Season 2, Episode 2, “Shoot The Moon”
- Tuesday, March 31, 2026: Daredevil: Born Again, Season 2, Episode 3, “The Scales & The Sword”
- Tuesday, April 7, 2026: Daredevil: Born Again, Season 2, Episode 4, “Gloves Off”
- Tuesday, April 14, 2026: Daredevil: Born Again, Season 2, Episode 5, “The Grand Design”
- Tuesday, April 21, 2026: Daredevil: Born Again, Season 2, Episode 6, “Requiem”
- Tuesday, April 28, 2026: Daredevil: Born Again, Season 2, Episode 7, “The Hateful Darkness”
- Tuesday, May 5, 2026: Daredevil: Born Again, Season 2, Episode 8, “The Southern Cross” *Season Finale*
- Tuesday, May 12, 2026: The Punisher: One Last Kill – Marvel Special Presentation
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