Daredevil: Born Again Series Review
When the MCU announced that they were doing a Daredevil series on Disney+ some fans were excited while others were very skeptical. While, getting the original cast back from the series was a great sign for fans, they were also worried about how the overall product was going to turn out because of Disney's “quantity over quality”. This series had a lot of potential to be great but let's unpack the highs and lows of the series.
Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk/Kingpin is excellent as always. He's excellent at making you feel empathy towards him as well as fear. Him becoming mayor is influenced by the 2019 comic run of Daredevil which I highly recommend checking into. He is easily one of the saving graces of this series.
The character named Muse is a newer villain of Daredevil who debuted in Vol. 5, Issue #11 of the 2016 run. He's a villain that uses his victims bloods for his art. In one of the comics he's in he takes a selfish with two girls who approach him about his “art" before he unalives him. What makes him a formidable villain is that Daredevil can't detect him using his enhanced hearing. This puts Daredevil at a huge disadvantage over Muse because he has to think of other ways to take him down without using his enhanced hearing.
Muse sounds like a badass as a villain doesn't he? Too bad he wasn't portrayed as such. In the series they took away his ability to cancel out Daredevil's enhanced hearing and he doesn't even last that long before meeting his demise. It's unfortunate because Muse had a lot of potential to be a formidable villain against the, “devil of hells kitchen.”
Jon Bernthal is another highlight of the series. However, my only issue is how he was used. He only appears once in the season before appearing in the season finale to help out Matt. What I would have done differently is have Matt go to Frank for help to take down Fisk to which Frank declines his offer only to interfere because he sees crooked NYPD officials wearing his logo harming innocent civilians.
Let's discuss the biggest problem: Daredevil. Matt's identity crisis feels like rehashed plots of the original Daredevil series. In S2 of the original series after Matt loses Elecktra he gives up Daredevil which leads into The Defenders series where he only comes out of retirement because the Hand returns. Most of the series feels more like a CSI series than an actual comic book show.
Daredevil: Born Again had the potential to be something amazing, however, it's inconsistent. It doesn't know rather it wants to be a soft reboot or a continuation of the original Netflix series. Not only that but the season feels rushed because it was original supposed to be 18 episodes and not 9. The pacing is bad, Muse is wasted, the supporting cast aren't as important to the plot, terrible CGI and the lack of action sequences.
I don’t outwardly “hate” Daredevil: Born Again because the acting is great and the action sequences we do get are still very fun. When it comes to this show I would use the term, “disappointing” more than anything. By the time the last two episodes came out I was already disappointed that it took this long for me to get invested into the show. Reminder for the producers of the show: quality over quantity.
Favorite Episodes: Isle of Joy & Straight to Hell
Rating: C+
