Next year is set to be a big year for the MCU, and not just because the upcoming Marvel movies Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts*, the recently-retitled The Fantastic Four: First Steps and Blade are all slated on the 2025 release schedule. Over in the TV realm, Daredevil: Born Again is set to premiere sometime in March 2025, thus finally allowing The Man Without Fear to take center stage ever since Marvel Studios started utilizing him several years after his Netflix show was cancelled. That said, this upcoming Marvel TV show went through a major creative overhaul last year, and after hearing from Charlie Cox how the original version of Born Again handled Foggy Nelson, I’m glad this ended up being changed.
Cox, who made his Daredevil debut back in 2015, spoke to Redditor CorptanSpecklez while attending Galaxy Con with other members of the Daredevil: Born Again cast. In addition to sharing that Matt Murdock and Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. Kingpin, will have “separate arcs” and only “interact a few times” (though these moments will make the show feel “elevated”), Cox mentioned that while Elden Henson wasn’t “originally invited” to reprise Foggy in the original version of Born Again. Instead, a Foggy cameo was written into the first episode to “end the link” between Netflix’s Daredevil and Born Again and “give the old fans closure.” However, once Born Again was overhauled, this plan got tossed out.
Although Charlie Cox didn’t elaborate on what this Foggy Nelson cameo would have entailed, according to a rumor from last year, in the original version of Daredevil: Born Again, Matt Murdock retired from being Daredevil after Foggy was killed. Considering how important Elden Henson’s Foggy was to the original Daredevil series, not to mention how both he and Karen Page were introduced in the comics at the same time as Matt, having him only make a cameo appearance, whether through a flashback or seeing the character die, is a baffling decision to me. The only thing arguably stranger than killing off Foggy was the claim that Deborah Ann Woll’s Karen, who rounded out the leading trio of Netflix’s Daredevil, was never even mentioned.
So when the news came in that Daredevil: Born Again was making huge changes behind the scenes, I was hopeful this meant that the likelihood of Henson’s Foggy and Woll’s Karen returning would increase. Sure enough, this past January, set videos confirmed both actors were back, and the following March, Charlie Cox said it was “pretty heartbreaking” when Henson and Foggy weren’t initially around. It’s also been clarified that Born Again will be more directly connected to its Netflix predecessor rather than take place in a different universe. That makes it all the more pleasing that this Foggy cameo was scrapped in favor of featuring him as a main character again.
In addition to the aforementioned actors, Daredevil: Born Again is bringing back Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle/The Punisher, Wilson Bethel as Benjamin Poindexter/Bullseye and Ayelet Zurer as Vanessa Marianna-Fisk. The lineup of newcomers includes Margarita Levieva, Michael Gandolfini, Genneya Walton, Art Froushan and Jeremy Earl, among others. As part of the overhaul, Dario Scardapane took over as showrunner, and Loki duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead are serving as the lead directors.
While we wait to learn when Daredevil: Born Again will specifically be released to those with a Disney+ subscription, remember that you can stream the original Daredevil on that same platform now. The next MCU TV show on the docket is Agatha All Along, which premieres September 18.
