After three years of being without Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock/Daredevil, Marvel fans reunited with the actor’s take on the character late last year in Spider-Man: No Way Home, and that was just the beginning. While No Way Home only saw Cox’s Matt cameoing in civilian form, in the weeks ahead, we’ll finally see him suit back up as Daredevil in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. That being said, Cox will be reprising the character in a series with a brighter tone compared to his Netflix outings, and She-Hulk head writer Jessica Gao has clarified why it makes sense to have a lighter Daredevil on this Disney+ show.
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law’s legal sitcom bent is a far cry from the dark waters the Netflix Daredevil series (which can now be viewed with a Disney+ subscription) navigated. So it won’t just be a differently-colored Daredevil costume that’s different about Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock in his next MCU appearance, but here’s what Jessica Gao had to say to CinemaBlend’s Law Sharma about why it’s fine that we’ll be seeing a lighter side of the character:
What’s nice about our show is any character that we bring into our show, any well-known character, they are getting to play in the tone of our show, you know? They get to kind of take a break from usually a very dramatic, kind of serious, intense, sometimes dark properties, but on our show, the stakes are different, the universe isn’t about to end. So it’s just normal slice of life stuff, it’s everyday stuff, so the characters themselves just naturally get to be a little bit more chill than the heightened ‘we got to save humanity.’ And also, because they get to take a comedy vacation in our show and really play in our tone, we get to see the lighter side of their character when they’re not in these heightened situations, when it’s just a regular weekday.
Daredevil is certainly no stranger to darkness in the comics, with writers like Frank Miller, Brian Michael Bendis and Ed Brubaker having put him through some miserable situations, and the 2003 Daredevil movie starring Ben Affleck also took on a darker tone. However, there have also been a decent amount of lighter Daredevil stories told over the years, including his early Silver Age appearances and the Mark Waid/Chris Samnee run. So She-Hulk: Attorney at Law provides an opportunity to highlight Daredevil through a lens non-comics fans aren’t used to seeing. Combine that with Jessica Gao’s explanation about how She-Hulk provides a platform to prioritize exploring these “slice of life” scenarios over a more dramatic narrative, and expect to see a Matt Murdock who doesn’t quite have the weight of the world on his shoulders.
While the specifics concerning Matt Murdock/Daredevil’s involvement in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law haven’t been divulged to the public, lead actress Tatiana Maslany has described Matt and Jennifer Walters as being best friends. So along with She-Hulk and Daredevil running into each other on the streets, it’s also reasonable they’ll run into each other in their civilian lives, especially since like Jennifer, Matt is an attorney. Following She-Hulk, Cox will reprise Daredevil in the Echo series alongside Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk/Kingpin, who made his MCU return in Hawkeye. After that, the two will lead the Daredevil: Born Again series, which will consist of 18 episodes.
New episodes of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law premiere Thursdays on Disney+. Be sure to learn what other small screen offerings the MCU has on the way by consulting our guide of upcoming Marvel TV shows.
