Three years after Daredevil ended on Netflix, Vincent D’Onofrio returned to the role of Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. Kingpin, for Hawkeye, and it just so happened to occur the same month that Charlie Cox cameoed as Matt Murdock in Spider-Man: No Way Home. D’Onofrio then reprised his Marvel character in Echo, and now we’re only weeks away from him stepping back into Fisk’s shoes for March’s Daredevil: Born Again. With roughly a month to go until the series’ premiere on the 2025 TV schedule, the actor has shared a major way Kingpin this time around will differ from how we saw him in Hawkeye, and it makes a lot of sense.
When Kingpin popped up on Hawkeye in late 2021, he was significantly stronger and more durable than he’d been presented in Daredevil, which played into the ambiguity of whether this was actually the same Wilson Fisk that those with a Netflix subscription had watched for three seasons. It’s since been clarified that Daredevil and the other Netflix-era Marvel shows did indeed take place take place in the main MCU continuity rather than another corner of the Marvel multiverse. That being said, D’Onofrio alluded to SFX (via ComicBookMovie) that we shouldn’t expect Kingpin to be shown at such a superhuman level in the upcoming Marvel TV show. As he explained:
They were kind of different iterations of the Fisk from the original show. My job is to service the story. Hawkeye was one style of show, very far away from the Netflix series, and the way Fisk was written itself - which was really good - was a completely different world. When I did Echo, they leaned into the grittiness, but when it came to Fisk, it still was not quite the original thing. We've had the chance now to do it the way we wanted to do it.
That’s not to say that Wilson Fisk won’t be physically imposing in Daredevil: Born Again. In fact, later in the interview, Vincent D’Onofrio said that the Born Again team is “doing some things in this new season we're about to shoot that require his size to be more specific and more detailed.” But if you’re expecting to see him rip off car doors without breaking a sweat or shrug off being impaled with an arrow or direct explosions, don’t hold your breath. While the use of the word ‘world’ shouldn’t be taken literally, it’s pretty clear that Born Again is going for a much more grounded tone, and that’ll include how Kingpin is depicted.
Between this and Matt Murdock’s romantic dalliance with She-Hulk not being mentioned, it seems like Daredevil: Born Again is doing its best to stand on its own within the larger MCU landscape. That said, obviously those who’ve seen the original Daredevil series will get a lot more enjoyment out of Born Again, and if you haven’t seen it, rectify that now with your Disney+ subscription. Other returning faces on Born Again include Elden Henson, Deborah Ann Woll, Jon Bernthal, Eyelet Zurer and Wilson Bethel, and the lineup of newcomers includes Margarita Levieva, Zebryna Guevara, Nikki M. James, Genneya Walton, Arty Froushan and Michael Gandolfini.
I’m ok with Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin not being as powerful as he was shown in Hawkeye as Daredevil: Born Again unfolds, as I’m much more interested in whatever machinations he’s up to as the mayor of New York City. Besides, if I want to see an onscreen Kingpin built like a monstrosity, I can just rewatch Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
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