Daredevil: Born Again exists in the MCU timeline today only because of one small and unforgettable cameo Charlie Cox did in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
The small cameo as Peter Parker’s lawyer in Spider-Man: No Way Home changed plans inside the MCU, and because of it, we have an entire show based on Daredevil’s story right here in the MCU!
How very exciting!
The Matt Murdock cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home changed so much for Daredevil in the MCU
When Brad Winderbaum spoke on the Daredevil: Born Again podcast, he talked about how things started to fall into place for Matt Murdock. He said,
“The second I heard that Charlie was going to be in Spider-Man, I was like, we’ve got to make the show. It opened the door.”
At the time, Charlie Cox’s cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home came as a surprise to fans. He was seen in a short scene with Peter, Aunt May, and Happy, where he suddenly caught a brick and told Peter that he’s a “really good lawyer.”
But internally, this cameo proved something important to the creators. It proved that there were a lot of people who still cared about Daredevil and Matt Murdock’s story.
Winderbaum added some more context during that same conversation with showrunner Dario Scardapane. He said,
“Once the door was ajar, I, like, got a crowbar in there and started to kind of inch it open.”
Now, keep in mind that there were no fixed plans before No Way Home. The return of Daredevil, and eventually Daredevil: Born Again, happened because of the audience response that came in from that one scene cameo, and this is what gave the studio more than enough confidence to move forward with new plans for Matt Murdock.
Daredevil: Born Again was shaped after the cameo, not before it
What makes Daredevil: Born Again interesting is how late it actually came together. According to Winderbaum, the show was not originally supposed to be a part of the MCU’s roadmap. However, it all started with Spider-Man.
He explained that early versions of the show were trying to stay distant from past Daredevil stories we’ve seen previously on Netflix, as well as in the MCU itself. But that idea was later changed.
Winderbaum said,
“I think the first incarnation of the show was trying to be a little too agnostic to the mythology of what came before…”
So yes, Daredevil: Born Again does acknowledge canon events like the Blip, but it does not rely on such events for storytelling. The show is pretty much grounded, just as we’d expect a Daredevil comic to be.
At the same time, Marvel is also making sure that everything still connects wherever it is wanted. Winderbaum told Entertainment Weekly,
“We are communicating a lot with the team on Spider-Man: Brand New Day to make sure that there’s coherence there…”
Even though Daredevil: Born Again might stand on its own (without the need to understand other MCU projects that came before it), it still connects back to the MCU, and especially to Spider-Man.
Daredevil: Born Again was ironically “born” from Charlie Cox’s small cameo from Spider-Man: No Way Home, and it gave Marvel the push it needed to tell a Matt Murdock-centric story in the MCU.
According to Brad Winderbaum’s own words, it is the cameo that opened a door, and that is how the studio chose to build something bigger from it.
Stay tuned to Soap Central for more updates.
Edited by Priscillah Mueni