Is "Daredevil - Rebirth" too politically correct?

The first season of Daredevil, the show created by Drew Goddard based on the Marvel comic book character created by Stan Lee and Bill Everett, coincided with a prosperous time for two entities. On one side, Netflix, the first home for the blind superhero brought to life by actor Charlie Cox, and on the other, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with its disruptive and distinct creativity, even though it considered the show somewhat separate from the rest of its cinematic universe. The show, consisting of three seasons, unexpectedly had its fourth season canceled while already in pre-production, during a period when the audiovisual industry was undergoing major transformations. Marvel had long been planning an expansion into television, with titles like Daredevil and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., while Netflix was managing an increasingly standardized offering, particularly in terms of style. It was 2015 when Marvel's Daredevil made its debut on the platform, which had only announced its intention to offer original content for subscribers in 2011, with shows like House of Cards. Meanwhile, although it had already concluded trilogies like Iron Man, the MCU had not even reached its tenth anniversary. It was a thriving time, and for that reason, two such dynamic entities, eager to expand and bring high-quality projects to life, decided to collaborate.

In 2013, the president of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, announced that the rights to several characters previously associated with 20th Century Fox had returned to Marvel. Among them was Daredevil, although Marvel did not want to produce an R-rated film as initially proposed by Goddard, nor did it want to focus on anything other than the Avengers or films that could be expanded into multiple chapters. After all, Daredevil is a character who doesn’t try to save the world but simply strives to keep his city clean. So, also in 2013, Marvel Television (a division of Marvel Entertainment focused on live-action and animated TV series) made a deal with Netflix for the production of four series that would later converge into one, similar to how the MCU protagonists came together on the big screen. Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and Luke Cage would each have their own individual journeys, culminating in the miniseries The Defenders. The cancellation of Daredevil was a clear example of how the expansion and evolution of streaming had changed the fate of superheroes on both the big and small screens. According to Parrot Analytics, at the time of its cancellation, Daredevil ranked as the fourth most-watched show on the platform (after Narcos, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and Stranger Things), and it also received great critical acclaim, with its third season reaching 97% approval on Rotten Tomatoes.

The cancellation of Daredevil on Netflix was just the first sign of Marvel’s plans, as the company was about to launch its own streaming service. The third season of the show was released in 2018, a year before the launch of Disney+, which already had several Marvel projects planned for serialization. Perhaps the timing wasn’t perfectly calculated, but even the Marvel Television division was shut down in 2019, although production restarted with Agatha All Along in 2024. The cancellation of Daredevil and the hope of seeing it on Disney+ came with a major obstacle: according to the original agreement between Marvel and Netflix, the characters could not be used in any non-Netflix film or series for two years after a show’s cancellation. This is one of the reasons why fans had to wait before seeing the masked vigilante return. Now, exactly ten years after the series' original debut, the story resumes—this time distributed by the same streaming service that once halted it. However, instead of returning with a direct sequel as expected, thus bypassing the previous narrative and character development, the series is taking a different approach. Starting on March 4, 2025, Disney+ is offering the new Daredevil: Born Again, which, true to its title and playing with the idea of the comic book devil’s return, focuses on re-exploring the character’s identity. A soft reboot, it attempts to revive what was originally created by Drew Goddard on Netflix while respecting the directives of the MCU, of which Daredevil has officially been a part for quite some time now.

From the very beginning, Kevin A. Mayer, former president of Walt Disney Direct-to-Consumer and International, had shown Disney+'s interest in taking over the series, although at the time of the streamer’s launch, nothing had yet been discussed. It was in 2020 that the first contact was made between Feige and Cox, with the goal of having the actor reprise his role as Murdock/Daredevil and officially join the MCU. More than a year later, in December 2021, the president of Marvel Studios confirmed the actor’s return (three years after the show's cancellation on Netflix) after his brief cameo in the blockbuster film Spider-Man: No Way Home that same year. In 2022, the official announcement of the series reboot was made—a completely new project that would exclude the storylines planned for a fourth and possible fifth season of Hell’s Kitchen’s vigilante. The sister series Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Punisher (a Daredevil spin-off), and The Defenders were removed from Netflix's catalog that same year and were set to arrive on Disney+ as well. Meanwhile, Charlie Cox continued to make appearances in various Marvel productions, reminding audiences of his imminent return. After No Way Home, he made appearances in She-Hulk and the miniseries Echo, as well as lending his voice to the 2025 animated series Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

Although the excitement of seeing the masked devil return is strong, so are the concerns and nostalgia mentioned at the beginning. Times have changed, along with the formats and approaches of streaming platforms. Even though Marvel has reached high-quality peaks in television with brilliant projects like Loki, the idea of a Daredevil series on Disney+ raises concerns that the dark and violent tone that defined the Netflix show has been removed to appeal to a broader audience, as Disney and Marvel often prefer. When Jessica Jones & Co. first arrived on Disney+, the platform was keen to emphasize that its parental control settings had been updated to prevent minors from viewing unsuitable content, promising that the essence of these series would remain intact. However, starting from scratch—building a series from the ground up—could easily mean a reinterpretation of Daredevil’s brutal and gritty storytelling, further distancing the show from its Netflix roots and aligning it more with the rest of Disney+’s catalog. Despite these uncertainties, audiences and fans have delivered a decent debut on the platform, even if it hasn’t reached the record-breaking numbers of other titles on the streamer. In its first five days after release, Daredevil - Born Again garnered 7.5 million views, making it Disney’s best-performing debut of 2025 but still trailing behind Agatha All Along (9.3 million in seven days), Loki Season 2 (10.9 million in three days), and The Acolyte (11.1 million in five days).

In its first episodes, Daredevil - Born Again seems determined to keep its promise of a series that doesn’t hold back and remains closely connected to the past. Right from the start, there’s an increasing number of violent deaths—the first fight sequence suggests that the dark tone of the Netflix show remains intact—along with a structure that leans heavily into crime and legal drama, similar to what was initially planned for the original streaming version. For Disney+, the series represents an opportunity to please those who have missed the character and to reward the fans' loyalty by giving them what they truly want. It’s what the character deserves: a story with its own distinct identity, already well established over the years, now elevated even further. This is a series that doesn’t focus too much on the future—something Marvel often does to a fault—but instead values the meaning of the word "rebirth."