Daredevil: Born Again

Season 2 is even better. “Born Again” is just as bloody, with big, bone-crunching fights climaxing seven of its eight episodes (the outlier ends in operatic tragedy). But engrossing as all get out.

Everyone on this show has come back at the top of their games. Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio are particularly good as their characters and slip back into them as if they stopped playing them yesterday, not several years ago.

A little tightening up would have heightened the tension. But as a snapshot of the state of the world right here and now it’s remarkably visionary. They must have seen it coming.

Born Again is finally less concerned with reconciling legacy status with its new place at the MCU’s vanguard. That conviction, to be the best Daredevil show it can be within the Marvel schematic, is admirable.

It’s when it tries to be grown-up and deep that Daredevil is unmasked in all its shallowness. Cox and D’Onofrio have crackling chemistry, but Daredevil is ultimately not daring enough to do justice to their electrifying performances.

In the end, as “Daredevil: Born Again” season 2 mirrors our current fascist moment while hinting at triumph, its restrictive character writing and dull, self-contained storytelling result in a middling, slow-building season—one that feels more promising for what’s on the horizon than what it delivers now.

Born Again gives you enough blood, sweat, and tears in its opening episode to suggest that maybe, just maybe, we’re so back. But it doesn’t take long for the promising revival to crumble once more into another incoherent mess of IP management.

It’s been years since we last saw Matt Murdock on the small screen, but Daredevil: Born Again proves he never truly left. This new chapter of the Hell’s Kitchen vigilante is harsh, raw, and at times, hopeless. And that’s precisely why it works. It doesn’t aim to be comforting or easy to watch — its goal is to remind us that the real world is rarely fair, and corruption is usually one step ahead of ideals. The series succeeds at that.Charlie Cox returns more restrained and broken, portraying a Murdock at war with both his faith and rage. But it’s Vincent D’Onofrio who continues to steal every scene — his Kingpin is already a legendary villain. You can’t help but hope everything goes wrong for him from minute one. The script leans into this, showing how power infiltrates everything, from politics to the courts. At times, the injustice is so overwhelming that it’s hard not to cry at certain decisions or betrayals. That emotional punch is the show’s real strength.Visually, it keeps the gritty, grounded aesthetic that made the original great. The action scenes are solid, though not flashy, and the pacing remains steady with few dips. The tone is darker, more mature, more political. There’s blood, pain — but also truth. And in a universe where so many series get lost in spectacle, that’s refreshing.Born Again won’t please everyone. Some will miss a more heroic tone or want more punches per minute. But this story is about something else: resilience, falling down and rising again, fighting even when you know the system is rigged against you. It’s not just about winning — it’s about enduring.Marvel has finally delivered something that doesn’t feel factory-made. And that, in itself, is a victory.

I've only watched a few episodes of the original series. I think this reboot/sequel has huge tone issues and it takes way too long for the hero to wear his suit. I know there were problems with the making of the series and it shows because you can see a darker, more interesting, show being hijacked by a casual MCU project for DIsney+. Plotlines and characters disappear way too fast or dont have anything interesting to do. Charlie Cox was good but Vincent D'Onofrio seemed to play more of a caricature than a real character. At least, the final episode was great and the future looks exciting.

So this isn’t as good as the original Netflix trilogy of Daredevil seasons. It’s not produced by the same original filming company, it’s not using the same writers, it’s not using the same directors and it’s two different cuts of two different seasons merged together (it’s true, look it up). It’s not bad and is still enjoyable, but it’s simply not as good as it once was. It has been filmed differently, the writing is different and the atmosphere is also different. I say this as someone who watched this after rewatching seasons 1-3, so the change was a lot more obvious to me than it would be if you’re just jumping into borne again after years of not having seen the original trilogy. Firstly there’s a lot of CGI instead of actual fight scenes and stunts. It’s noticeably bad CGI. It reminds me a lot of the CGI they used in the CW’s flash where it just looks jarringly low budget and out of place. The filming style is completely different. It doesn’t feel like they filmed this in the same city and it’s less dark and atmospheric because of this. The writing is worse in this one. They should have avoided mentioning the MCU because boy is there a lot you need to watch to get all the references. You need to watch Echo to understand a lot of what’s going on with Fisk, you need to have watched miss marvel (a show more for teenage girls with little crossover with the violent daredevil) or you'll be wondering why there's a man going on about her for 5 minutes of the full runtime of episode 5 and you need to watch a lot of other shows to get lots of little references like what a skrull is. It’s a mess and you can tell they reshot a lot of this season. Most episodes have two directors and you can tell which was the old version of this season and which is new. They kill off two characters at the beginning of the season. To be honest I don’t think this works because they were the cornerstone of seasons 1-3 and they clearly could have gotten them back if they wanted to. They’re not really replaced with anything. Matt Murdock just does his own thing in this season. Like others have said there’s a lot of filler in this show. You’ll notice it. In episode 3 there’s a 10-15 minutes of scenes dedicated to a completely unlikable character who wants to avoid prison for stealing food. These scenes go nowhere, add nothing to the overall plot, don’t provide any character development and are never referenced again. Basically it feels like there’s a lot of padding to get the runtime up. Watch episode 5 and tell me that didn't feel like a 35 minute filler episode. Another thing I disliked is the BB segments that are injected throughout the city. It doesn’t work, the characters she interviews are just annoying and give no reason for the viewer to care about their opinion (just like how similar segments work in real life!). Personally I don’t want this show to be cancelled but it’s crazy how much whoever made this didn’t get what made the Netflix series great.

TF is this garbage? That opening scene tells you all you need to know about this show. Champagne aspirations and beer pockets with this "one shot" directing when you have terrible players trying to carry that weight. They really just blew it and tried to go full comic with the CGI too. There's nothing redeeming here. This show was so boring it made me start reading again.

I genuinely asked, "Was it the cinematographer's birthday?" Shots are overworked, the writers seem to have a genuine disdain for the characters, and the story diverges without meaningful resolution. Why are the showrunners obsessed with the protagonists NOT being the titular hero? It feels like they are shackled to the IP, not delivering it.