The Man Without Fear Returns in a Brutally Solid Start

Editor’s Note: The below contains spoilers for the Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 premiere.In 2025, Charlie Cox‘s fan-favorite street-level Marvel hero was brought back into the MCU fold with Daredevil: Born Again, which picked up where Matt Murdock’s story left off in the critically acclaimed Netflix series. However, it wasn’t always that way, and when both fans and those close to the project expressed their concerns about the apparent lack of continuity, it led to a massive creative overhaul. The result was far more connections to the original show that fans no doubt appreciated, but also a few narrative inconsistencies across Season 1. Still, with gripping performances, intense action scenes, and a refreshing level of grit rarely seen in the MCU, Daredevil: Born Again quickly earned a second season, which has finally premiered with its first episode on Disney+.

Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 concluded with both attorney Matt Murdock (Cox) and recently elected New York mayor Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) reembracing their cast-aside roles as Daredevil and the Kingpin, respectively. Fisk has assembled a task force of violent, corrupt police officers to round up the city’s vigilantes, prompting Daredevil and his longtime companion, Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), to kickstart a resistance movement against the nefarious villain. With New York’s very soul on the line, Matt and Karen are making some excellent progress, but Fisk, as per usual, has some tricks up his sleeve.

‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Season 2 Has Bad News for Karen/Frank Shippers

Daredevil: Born Again‘s Season 2 premiere wastes zero time getting right to the action, with Daredevil investigating a heavily guarded cargo ship that appears to be smuggling weapons for Fisk. Our favorite Man Without Fear is also rocking a brand-new costume, with some much darker shades of red and black making for a stealthier look despite the more bombastic DD on his chest. It’s a nice change of pace from Season 1, which primarily saw Matt flirting with the idea of returning to his Daredevil persona before finally embracing his destiny as Hell’s Kitchen’s greatest Defender.

After a predictably brutal and entertaining (albeit somewhat choppily edited) fist fight with some guards, Matt finds evidence that the ship is being used to smuggle weapons, possibly for Fisk’s Anti-Vigilante Task Force (or AVTF for short), but not before the ship’s captain and first mate rig the ship to sink. Matt escapes, leaving Mayor Fisk to see the damage, enraged to learn that the captain and first mate have disappeared. As a result, Fisk orders his new right-hand man, Buck (Arty Froushan), and the AVTF to tie up these loose ends as soon as possible.

After escaping the ship, Matt returns to his home base to find his longtime friend Karen Page training, but the passionate kiss the two share seemingly confirms that they’re a lot more than friends now. For the first time since Season 2 of the original Netflix series, Matt and Karen have evidently rekindled their complicated romance, which is bad news for all the fans rooting for Karen and Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) to end up together. Some may also be disappointed that this rekindling seemingly happened in between seasons, but it’s still nice to see the two fan-favorite characters together again.

‘Daredevil: Born Again’s Supporting Characters Already Have a Lot More To Do

Perhaps a lot of it was due to the much-publicized creative overhaul, but one of Daredevil: Born Again Season 1’s larger issues was not knowing what to do with its supporting characters. That doesn’t appear to be the case thus far for Season 2, as the MCU show is already taking some steps in the right direction, starting with arguably Season 1’s most divisive character, Dr. Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva). Now fully under Fisk’s employ, Heather appears to be haunted by Season 1’s events, particularly her role in gunning down the artistic serial killer Muse (Hunter Doohan). As traumatizing as the experience was, Heather is very clearly entering her villain era, even fabricating medical documents for Jack Duquesne (Tony Dalton), AKA the Swordsman, to further Fisk’s anti-vigilante agenda.

Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 also introduces a brand-new wildcard into the mix with Mr. Charles (Matthew Lillard), who appears to be far more of a threat than anyone could have predicted. While nobody seems to know who this individual is or where he came from, he’s got friends in high places, yet he seems to be on Fisk’s side (at least, for now) since his employers are the ones who requested that weapons shipment. This is evident when Fisk is being chastised by the attorney general for his fascist and clearly illegal methods to reign in New York’s vigilantes, only for him to get a call from Charles’ associate “Ms. De Fontaine” (guaranteed to be none other than Julia Louis Dreyfus’ cutthroat Thunderbolts* antagonist).

Meanwhile, independent journalist BB Urich (Genneya Walton) is also back, now helping Daniel Blake (Michael Gandolfini) make AVTF propaganda videos. In actuality, BB is working undercover to expose Fisk as the monster he is, working alongside Karen to help prove that Fisk was the one who murdered her uncle, Ben Urich (Vondie Curtis-Hall), all the way back in Netflix’s Daredevil Season 1. There’s even some sort of Fisk caricature that is interrupting BB’s propaganda in an attempt to show what the mayor is really up to. While that’s going on, Matt’s legal partner, Kirsten McDuffie (Nikki M. James), is dealing with an increasingly corrupt legal system, while PI Cherry (Clark Johnson) is trying to find some dirt on those missing sailors, though his digging hasn’t gone unnoticed by Fisk’s team.

‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Season 2’s Premiere Teases an Unlikely Alliance

In a sequence that eerily mirrors the ruthless and controversial tactics of the Trump administration’s ICE agents (as recently seen in The Pitt), Fisk’s AVTF uses violence and intimidation to achieve its goals, once again showing the TV-MA series isn’t afraid to delve into modern cultural and political issues. The corrupt cops, led by Officer Powell (Hamish Allan-Headley), have already tracked down and taken care of the ship’s captain, but the first mate is still at large. This leads a crew of AVTF agents to Cherry’s apartment, where they begin to relentlessly torture the former NYPD detective, leading Daredevil to swoop in and save him.

However, things take a grim turn when Cherry begins to have a heart attack, and not only does the pounding heartbeat overwhelm Matt’s senses, but it also gives him grim flashbacks to the death of his best friend, Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson), in Season 1. Matt is so distracted to the point where the AVTF agents not only overtake him, but also even unmask him, revealing the secret identity of Daredevil. The big reveal doesn’t last, as the agents are quickly slain by an unknown assailant, whose identity is revealed to be none other than Bullseye (Wilson Bethel).

Even though Benjamin Poindexter shot Matt while trying to kill Fisk not too long ago, murdered Foggy, and is seemingly secretly still working with Vanessa Fisk (Ayelet Zurer), Bullseye saving his archnemesis seems to indicate the early beginnings of an uneasy alliance between the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen and the Man Without Mercy. Working with a good-intentioned vigilante like the Punisher, who thinks killing is necessary, is one thing, but working with a vindictive assassin who finds deep-seated pleasure in the deaths of others may push our hero into truly uncharted territory, and one that charts a very exciting direction for the MCU saga.

The Season 2 premiere of Daredevil: Born Again is streaming now on Disney+.