Season 2 of Daredevil: Born Again hits the nail on the head

Luca Fontana

26.3.2026

Translation: Elicia Payne

It seems Marvel can do things differently after all: season 2 of Daredevil: Born Again isn’t a watered-down superhero drama, but a dark, political series – and it has more guts than I’d have ever given it credit for.

Don’t worry, this review contains zero spoilers. I won’t be revealing anything you haven’t already seen in trailers. The second season of Daredevil: Born Again has been airing weekly on Disney+ since 24 March.

No, I won’t shy away from comparing it to the first season. Season one, despite all the things it did right, was a bit of a mixed bag. It’s as if someone suddenly had a lightbulb moment in the middle of production and shouted, «Wait a minute – this is actually airing on Disney+!»

It was the result of a production nightmare that has been well documented. When Marvel became dissatisfied with the shallow, not-hard-enough vision of showrunners Chris Ord and Matt Corman, they were fired during the 2023 writers’ strike and the footage that had already been shot was sent back to the editing room. Dario Scardapane – formerly the showrunner of The Punisher – took on the task of reimagining the series from the ground up: making it tougher, more uncompromising, and closer to its predecessor, which originally aired on Netflix.

The final product seemed so improvised in parts that it looked like two completely different series had been cobbled together with a hammer and duct tape.

In Marvel’s defence, the instinct to pull the plug was the right one. The problem was that they simply couldn’t afford to produce an entirely new season. So they reused fragments of the old version – fragments that ended up in the middle section and felt like a clumsy Disney Channel-style detour in a series that really knew better, while the beginning and end were actually compelling.

But season two is flawless from start to finish: there are eight episodes, each about 50 minutes long. And it has a constant theme that runs through it. No «case of the week» interlude. And no comedic elements out of place. I’m impressed. For Daredevil, tonal consistency isn’t negotiable – it’s a fundamental requirement. This character, this world, and this conflict only work if the series doesn’t shy away from its own harshness.

What Daredevil: Born Again, season 2 is all about

Wilson Fisk is the mayor of New York – and he’s changed the rules of the game. In his city, masked heroes like Daredevil are no longer heroes, but criminals. That’s why he’s set up a militarised task force specifically to hunt them down, justified by laws that he himself helped draft. And the city follows him because he gives them what they want: a sense of security and order.

Meanwhile, Matt Murdock, the blind lawyer with a double life, no longer struggles with who he is. He’s answered that question for himself. Now he’s grappling with what that means in a city that’s declared him a public enemy, and where the law itself is now a tool used by the man he’s trying to stop.

The law as a weapon

The most powerful idea in this season is also its most unsettling: Fisk doesn’t break the law. He uses it. He’s set up a task force that operates with government immunity, patrolling the streets in uniform and ruthlessly rounding up civilians—all in the name of order, security, and the supposed protection of the city from the so-called «true» villains: masked individuals and vigilantes like Matt Murdock.

That’s the core theme of this season. It questions what happens when an authoritarian system hijacks the language of law and justice to impose its own version of justice.

Meanwhile, Fisk is selling this repression as protection. He fuels fear and turns it into loyalty. He makes ordinary people feel like someone’s finally fighting for them, while behind closed doors he writes rules that make him untouchable.

The worst part is: it actually works. Supposedly. After all, according to the mayor’s office, the city’s economy is said to be in better shape than ever. That is exactly why Fisk becomes something far more dangerous than just a gangster boss. He becomes a man who has convinced himself that he’s doing the right thing.

It’s hard to overlook the fact that this bears an alarmingly direct resemblance to the current political situation. Against the backdrop of what is currently happening in the U.S., the images of Fisk’s task force – militarised, fanatically loyal, and granted a free hand by the government – take on an unsettling intensity that goes far beyond that of a comic book adaptation.

It’s hard to say whether Scardapane and his scribes planned it that way or whether reality simply caught up with their story. My bet is on the latter. Fisk’s task force was introduced toward the end of the first season, and the scripts for season two were written and filmed long before state-sanctioned units operating within complete disregard for the law became a political reality in the United States.

Either way, the result’s the same. In this second season, Born Again feels so disturbingly relevant – especially visually – unlike anything we’ve seen from the Marvel Universe before.

Two men, two masks

What makes this conflict so compelling is that it isn’t simple. Fisk and Matt aren’t clear-cut examples of good and evil. They’re two men who both believe they’re giving the city what it needs. Both use symbols, both resort to violence, and both claim to uphold justice. The difference lies in what power means to each of them: for Fisk, it’s possession; for Matt, it’s responsibility.

And this season, Matt has finally stopped struggling with it. In the first season, he kept asking what the mask really meant to him. Is it his true self, his burden, his excuse? Season two doesn’t come up with a new answer to this question – it simply doesn’t ask it anymore. Because Matt now knows that he wears it because of an almost painful clarity about what he’s capable of and what that demands of him. This is a development of the character that was missing from the first season – and that makes this second season so much stronger.

And I’m glad about it. After all, there are characters in the Marvel Universe who simply wouldn’t work without a certain degree of uncompromising determination. Daredevil is one of them. Not because violence and brutality are ends in themselves, but because this character’s moral world is only credible if it causes palpable pain. Literally. Matt never fights his way through hordes of enemies with supernatural ease. After every confrontation, he lies on the ground, gasping for breath, and pays the price for his decisions.

Season two understood the assignment. The fight choreography is as authentic and genuine as ever, characterised by manual labour rather than CGI perfection. The series is allowed to hurt again—physically, morally, and emotionally. And it does.

Where Born Again stumbles

Nevertheless, the second season of Born Again isn’t entirely perfect. It starts with the relationship to the rest of the Marvel Universe, which, the more you think about it, the more it sits heavily in your stomach.

Fisk’s regime, for example, is vast – so vast that one inevitably wonders where the rest of the heroes and heroines are while New York descends into a fascist police state. Especially after the events of Thunderbolts and Spider-Man: No Way Home, there’s no way they’re all just going to sit around twiddling their thumbs while Fisk sends his troops out onto the streets.

Sure, Born Again could also be set before the current MCU timeline (unless the upcoming Punisher –TV special bridges the gap between Born Again and Spider-Man: Brand New Day). But the more I think about it, the more I feel drawn away from the story. That’s not a problem that Born Again created for itself. It’s a structural legacy of the Marvel Universe that TV series with limited budgets simply can’t overcome. But it still stings.

Matt’s principle of not killing anyone also feels a bit tired. Here, it once again serves as one of the main internal conflicts. It’s an integral part of his character, no question about it, and you wouldn’t want to be without it. But Netflix’s season two already explored this conflict so prominently and so precisely. Back then, it clashed with the Punisher, who challenged Matt’s convictions with a brutality that was hard to top – that here, over a decade later and on a different streaming service, it feels a bit overdone.

There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just not exactly new.

And then there’s the return of Jessica Jones. She shows up late in the season, and her appearance is basically just that: a cameo for the trailer, for the hype, and for the comment sections. You could have left her out, and the story would have turned out exactly the same. Unlike Karen Page’s return, which gives the season real emotional weight, Jessica Jones remains a minor character with no dramatic purpose.

Luca Fontana

Senior Editor

Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.ch

I write about technology as if it were cinema, and about films as if they were real life. Between bits and blockbusters, I’m after stories that move people, not just generate clicks. And yes – sometimes I listen to film scores louder than I probably should.

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