Daredevil: Born Again Violence Goes ‘Way Past Anything Netflix Ever Did’

There were many things that stood out about Netflix’s Daredevil series, back when it launched in 2015. First up, it really took Marvel’s blind vigilante seriously, diving deep into his psyche, his city, and his Hell’s Kitchen history. Plus, it delivered top-tier fight scenes, changing the game with its no-cuts hallway brawl. And then, there was the unflinching violence – bloody and uncompromising, a world away from the big-screen Marvel movies. You’d be forgiven, then, for thinking that the show’s new life on Disney+ as Daredevil: Born Again – bringing the return of Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil, and Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin – would find it slightly softened from that original form. Apparently not.

In fact, as Daredevil: Born Again showrunner Dario Scardapane (previously behind The Punisher series) tells Empire, it’s going even harder than ever before. “The level of violence is way up there for a Marvel/Disney show,” he says. “I don’t think there’s anything else even in the ballpark. There’s a moment in this that is just absolutely batshit, and way past anything Netflix ever did.” That’s almost hard to imagine, given that the previous Daredevil show had Fisk slamming heads in car doors, with minions who’d sooner impale their heads on spikes than name their omniscient boss. But Kingpin himself agrees that Born Again is both deeper and darker. “There’s a world in which you might think that if that show kept running, we’d be in this place eventually, or something like it,” says D’Onofrio. “But we’ve gone further in the darkness, the action, the nastiness.”

Exactly how that bubbles over remains to be seen – as Born Again begins, we find Murdock and Fisk forced into some kind of fragile truce, publicly playing nice. “If you look at how it ends almost every season, they punch the shit out of each other, Kingpin goes to jail, we know he’s gonna come back. I didn’t want to do that,” teases Scardapane. “This dynamic is way more tense. There’s one scene between them in the first episode that lays it all out. Then we spend the next eight episodes throwing rocks at it.” Sounds like those rocks are really going to hurt.

Read Empire’s full Daredevil: Born Again feature – speaking to Charlie Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio, showrunner Dario Scardapane, directs Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, and more – in the Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning issue, on sale Thursday 13 February. Pre-order a copy online here. Daredevil: Born Again comes to Disney+ from 5 March.