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Daredevil: Winderbaum on How "Born Again" Is Similiar to "X-Men '97"

Marvel Studios' Brad Winderbaum on Daredevil: Born Again being similar to X-Men '97 and the evolving dynamic between Matt Murdock & Kingpin.

Back in May, it was confirmed that Marvel Studios' nine-episode Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock/Daredevil) and Vincent D'Onofrio (Wilson Fisk/Kingpin)-starring Daredevil: Born Again would be hitting screens in March 2025. While that might seem like a long time to wait for the eagerly anticipated live-action series to arrive, Brad Winderbaum, Marvel Studios' Head of Streaming, Television and Animation, shares some perspectives on what viewers can expect. For those excited to see Cox, D'Onofrio, and others back portraying their characters from the Netflix series days, Winderbaum teases that you should expect the series to be very similar in approach to a certain hit animated series.

"'Daredevil' is incredible. It's similar in some ways to 'X-Men '97' because it's reviving something that the fans love – but it is taking it in a new direction. These characters have matured. The universe is different than it was. Things have changed. Society's changed," Winderbaum shared during this week's edition of The Official Marvel Podcast. But as we've seen in projects such as Echo and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Cox's Matt Murdock and D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk aren't quite the same, either – and that will elevate the animosity between the two beyond the two just beating the collective crap out of one another. "Matt and Wilson have changed, and their characters are gonna collide in ways we've never seen before. It's no longer enough to try and murder each other; there's a whole game of politics at play," Winderbaum added.

Daredevil: Born Again – What We Know So Far…

Joining Cox, D'Onofrio, and the returning  Jon Bernthal, Deborah Ann Woll, Elden Henson, and Ayelet Zurer (either confirmed or reported) are Margarita Levieva, Michael Gandolfini, Nikki M. James, Genneya Walton, Clark Johnson, Arty Froushan, Zabryna Guevara, Wilson Bethel, Michael Gaston, Marc Geller, Lou Taylor Pucci, and Harris Yulin. Dario Scardapane (Netflix's The Punisher) serves as showrunner, and the co-directing team of Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead (Loki) are helming the remainder of the season the first season.

Previous set images/videos featured someone sporting the Punisher's skull – though not Bernthal. That added fuel to the fire that the season will include a storyline about rogue cops perverting the Punisher's cause & symbol to justify their crimes. Someone dropping a whole lot of fuel onto that theory was none other than Bernthal – who took to Instagram to post an image of the cover of One Batch, Two Batch. Yup, Lisa Castle's favorite book before going to sleep – the one that contains "One Batch, Two Batch, Penny and Dime" (which we learn in Netflix's Daredevil S02E04: "Penny and Dime"). Could we be getting a backstory revisit as a reminder of how the Punisher came to be? Here's a look at the post:

Daredevil: Echo Post-Credits Scene Gives New Meaning to "Born Again"?

Without giving away too much about Marvel Studios' Echo, the final showdown between Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) and Kingpin finds Maya using the powers of her Choctaw ancestors to venture into Kingpin's mind to rid him of the pain & rage that's fueled him for so long. Okay, got that? Good… because that leads us to the mid-credits scene. Making a getaway to greener pastures on his private jet, a news report about the New York City mayoral race catches his attention. While the reporter discusses how the city is looking for someone who will fight for them, we see a look on Kingpin's face that says that he believes he could be the answer to NYC's problems. For those of you who are comics fans, you know that Fisk has already recently gone down that route post-"Secret Empire" in a storyline that saw Matt Murdock as deputy mayor and Luke Cage running for office (yeah, there was a lot going on).

But why is this situation so different? Because we don't know which Wilson Fisk wants to be mayor heading into Daredevil: Born Again. We knew what Kingpin we were dealing with pre-Echo, so it would be easy to write this off as just a mad power grab on Kingpin's part. But if all of that pain and rage is now gone, who are we dealing with now? Because "Born Again" takes on a totally different meaning if we're dealing with Fisk legitimately believing he can do right by NYC – that he can be his savior. Throw into that mix the possibility that what Maya did may not stick – maybe Fisk's pain and rage are just too great to stay gone forever. And now that we're thinking about it, having Matt Murdock not believing that Fisk has changed and continuing to target him could also be an interesting way to push Fisk back to his old, big-bad ways.

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