’Daredevil: Born Again’s Marvel Disney+ Experiment Was Always Doomed To Fail

Image via Disney+ Published Sep 22, 2026, 7:48 AM EDT Collier Jennings is an entertainment journalist with extensive experience. Collier, or "CJ" to his friends and family, is a dedicated fan of genre films - particularly science fiction, fantasy, and comic book adaptations, not to mention all forms of animation. This stems from a close bond with his father, who introduced him to these genres via copies of X-Men comics and reruns of the original Ultraman series. With his near-encyclopedic knowledge and bottomless love of genre, he's tackled a wide variety of articles. Sign in to your Collider account It's the end of an era for one of Marvel's most iconic heroes, as news broke that Daredevil: Born Again will end next year with Season 3. The news is fairly shocking, given that Born Again marked the long-awaited return of Charlie Cox's Man Without Fear and received critical acclaim for its first two seasons. Yet it also highlights Marvel Television's changing approach to greenlighting live-action TV series, which Collider originally reported. More importantly, Born Again's cancellation highlights that the series had problems that plagued its production from the jump. When Daredevil: Born Again was first announced, Chris Corman and Matt Ord (Covert Affairs) were named showrunners, and the series was essentially a continuation of Netflix's original Daredevil series. By the time Born Again premiered in 2025, things had drastically changed: Dario Scardapane was now in the showrunner's chair, with Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio, who plays Daredevil's archnemesis Wilson Fisk, as executive producers. Over time, it became clear that Born Again was built on a shaky foundation, and its cancellation revealed just how unstable that foundation was. 'Daredevil: Born Again' Never Settled On A Clear Creative Decision Image via Marvel Studios The issues with Chris Corman and Matt Ord's vision for Daredevil: Born Again weren't revealed until late 2023, when The Hollywood Reporter reported that the series underwent a creative overhaul after six episodes. Corman and Ord apparently structured Born Again as less of a superhero series and more of a legal thriller, with Matt Murdock not putting on his costume until the fourth episode. Marvel pivoted, bringing on Scardapane and a new set of directors alongside returning cast members from the original Daredevil — particularly Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson, who play Murdock's friends Karen Page and Foggy Nelson, respectively. However, even with a creative refresh, the seams of the original vision were still visible. Season 1 doesn't have Matt suit up until its halfway point, though he has a good reason to leave Daredevil behind, as he nearly crossed a line after Foggy's death at the hands of Bullseye (Wilson Bethel). The terrifying villain Muse left a lot to be desired, especially as he lacked the abilities that made him a match for the Man Without Fear in the comics. Scardapane has also left Born Again after his contract recently expired, meaning that the series is once again about to undergo a major creative shift before it ends. While Scardapane's exit isn't as turbulent as the creative shift behind X-Men '97, it still shows that Marvel should sit down and hammer out a clear plan for its next television project. Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Superhero Team Should You Join? Avengers · X-Men · Teen Titans · The Boys Every team is a personality test with a uniform. One saves the world and argues about it the whole way home. One has been fighting for the right to exist since the day it formed. One is still working out who it is while the fighting happens. And one has no powers at all, plus no intention of playing fair. Eight questions decide where you actually belong. 🛡️Avengers(Marvel Studios) 🧬X-Men(Marvel) 🐦Teen Titans(DC) 💊The Boys(Prime Video) FIND YOUR TEAM → 01 What kind of power would you actually want? The power matters less than what you would be willing to do with it. ASomething enormous and obvious. I would not hide it. BSomething I was born with, whether I wanted it or not. CSomething still growing that I cannot quite control. DNone at all. I would rather nobody sees me coming. NEXT QUESTION → 02 Why join a team at all? Nobody puts on the suit for the reason they say out loud. ABecause some threats are too big for anyone alone. BBecause people like me are safer together than apart. CBecause I did not want to do any of this alone. DBecause somebody has to hold these people accountable. NEXT QUESTION → 03 How do you feel about the people in charge? Every team has a chain of command. Very few of them survive contact. AI will follow a good leader and argue with a bad one. BThey have never protected people like me. I expect nothing. CI am still learning who to trust, and getting it wrong. DThey are the problem. That is the entire point. NEXT QUESTION → 04 What is your role inside a group? Every roster needs the same handful of people to function. AThe big personality. I take up room and I earn it. BThe one who protects whoever arrived most recently. CThe heart. I keep everybody talking to each other. DThe one who says the uncomfortable thing out loud. NEXT QUESTION → 05 How do you win a fight you should lose? This is the scene the entire film gets built around. AOverwhelming force, and a very good landing. BWorking together in a way nobody saw coming. CRefusing to give up long after I should have. DPreparation, leverage, and one extremely dirty trick. NEXT QUESTION → 06 What is this work costing you? Nobody does this for free. The bill just arrives differently for everyone. AMy private life. Everybody knows my face now. BMy safety. The world is frightened of me. CMy childhood. I grew up faster than I should have. DMy peace. I cannot stop now that I know. NEXT QUESTION → 07 How should the world see your team? Half of this job is public relations, and everybody knows it. AAs icons. The team everyone is relieved to see arrive. BAs people. Just people, which is all we ever asked. CAs proof the next generation is going to be fine. DThey should not see us at all until it is done. NEXT QUESTION → 08 The offer arrives. What makes you say yes? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your team. AThe scale. If the world is ending, I want to be there. BThe promise that I would not have to hide anymore. CThe people. I would be joining friends, not an employer. DThe chance to take down somebody who deserves it. REVEAL MY TEAM → Recruitment Is Complete Your Team Is…Four teams, four completely different reasons to put yourself in danger for strangers. This is the roster you actually belong on, what they would want from you, and what it would cost you to stay. The AvengersYou belong where the stakes are largest and the personalities are loudest. This is a team of people who are all used to being the most important person in the room, which is exactly why it works and exactly why it keeps nearly falling apart. The Avengers are not friends who became a team. They are a team that slowly and reluctantly became friends, and you would recognise every stage of that process. You can hold your own among big egos without needing to win every exchange, which is the real entry requirement here. The arguing is part of the method. This group does its best thinking mid-disagreement, usually at volume, usually in a very expensive building. When the sky opens, they are who shows up. You would want to be standing in that line. The X-MenYou have never had the luxury of being thanked for this. The X-Men protect a world that has never once been comfortable with them existing, and something in you understands exactly why they keep doing it anyway. This is the only team on the list whose central conflict is not a villain. It is being wanted gone by the same people they keep saving. You know what it is to be the outsider in a room and to decide, anyway, that you will not make yourself smaller so everyone else is comfortable. The X-Men are the most genuine found family in comics. People arrive with nowhere else to go and are never once asked to explain themselves. You would not be joining for the glory. There has never been any. The Teen TitansYou do not want colleagues, you want your people. The Titans are the team where the friendship came first and the world-saving turned up afterwards as an inconvenient side effect. Every Titan is somebody's sidekick who decided to stop being one. That decision, not the villain of the week, is what the team is actually about. You would be joining people who are all working themselves out at the same time as you, which is far less lonely than being the only one. The Titans lose regularly. Then they eat together and come back better, which is a more honest model of growing up than any other team here manages. The tower would be loud, chaotic, and the first place that ever felt like yours. The BoysYou are not asking who to trust. You worked out the answer a while ago and it was nobody in a cape. This is where you go once you have decided the people in charge need watching, and that nobody else is going to do it. The Boys have no powers, no mandate and no funding. What they have is leverage, patience, and a very high tolerance for consequences. You are the person in the room who notices the thing everybody else has quietly agreed not to mention. This is not a heroic team and it has never pretended otherwise. It is a group of damaged people doing necessary work in ways nobody would call clean. You would not sleep well. You would keep going anyway. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ There Still Might Be Hope for Matt Murdock After 'Daredevil: Born Again' While Daredevil: Born Again might be ending next year, there is still a way for the Man Without Fear to show up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Since the final season of Born Again is slated to reunite Matt Murdock with his fellow Defenders, a new series featuring them working together could tie up any loose ends the series had. There's also the possibility of Daredevil showing up in movies, which almost actually happened this year. While discussing the creative process behind Spider-Man: Brand New Day, screenwriter Chris McKenna revealed that he and longtime collaborator Erik Sommers originally wrote a draft in which Peter Parker sought legal counsel from Murdock. “We had, like, Peter so done with New York, with his past, that he goes off and is a badass hero in Southeast Asia, taking down Southeast Asian gangs...Then he gets a message and a video about Spider-Man back in New York, charming fans. He’s like, ‘What? There’s some imposter in New York.’ So then he has to go all the way back to New York to deal with this imposter. Who is this guy? And it turns out the guy has done what Peter Parker had never done, where he actually had copywritten the Spider-Man brand, trademarked it, and had his web fluid. Then he had to hire Matt Murdock as a lawyer to help him fight." If Daredevil shows up in a Spider-Man movie, it would pull off a crossover Marvel fans have wanted for years and be a full-circle moment since Charlie Cox first returned as Matt Murdock in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Whatever the Man Without Fear's future holds, Marvel should make sure that the production problems that plagued Born Again don't return. Seasons 1 and 2 of Daredevil: Born Again are currently available to stream on Disney+. Stay tuned to Collider for updates. Release Date March 4, 2025 Network Disney+ Showrunner Dario Scardapane Directors Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson, David Boyd, Jeffrey Nachmanoff Writers Jesse Wigutow, Jill Blankenship, Thomas Wong, David Feige, Grainne Godfree Franchise(s) Daredevil, Marvel Cinematic Universe Creator(s) Matt Corman, Chris Ord, Dario Scardapane