The MCU better do right by Daredevil, but I don't know if they can
Marvel's latest challenge will be the merging of two completely different tones. I wonder if they'll have to be some sacrifices on either end to make it work
If you didn't already know, Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock had a cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home, which means some version of his Daredevil character is now officially in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
That reveal was followed by reports that the character is set to appear “everywhere” in the MCU over the next handful of years, perhaps starting as early as She-Hulk, which is set to release sometime in 2022. That news was then followed up by Tom Holland’s desire to work with Cox in a Spider-Man/Daredevil team-up, which also came around the same as Cox expressing the desire to play the Hell’s Kitchen attorney for as long as he can.
“I hope, I don't want to sound greedy, but I hope I get to do loads more. I hope I get to be involved way, way more for many years. I hope it never ends.”
As someone who recently finished Netflix’s Daredevil series, all this news and all these quotes have me excited about the future of the character within the MCU. But I also can’t help but have some slight concerns over what that future might look like.
If it were up to Kevin Fiege and the people at Marvel, I have no doubt that Daredevil would look and feel like, well… Daredevil. Dark. Brutal. Violent. The kind of character you probably shouldn’t watch while eating food (At least that was one of my takeaways over the course of three seasons).
Unfortunately, as we all know, Marvel doesn’t make all the calls. Its parent company, Disney, does. And Disney has an image to uphold, one that greatly contrasts to stuff like this:
(And believe it or not, this is some of the lighter stuff of the series)
Nailing the darker tone of Daredevil alongside much lighter heroes is a tough challenge (It could be made easier if he gets his own show again, but that only answers so much of the problem if he’s also to appear elsewhere across other MCU properties). Maybe he doesn’t have to break bones and bloody people to within an inch of their lives, but there’s still a grittiness that needs to be present because it’s essential to what makes the character so great.
It’s the same conversation everyone was having when thinking about Deadpool coming into the MCU. Of course, you can have a version of Deadpool that’s PG-13 and it’d probably still be really good. But if you want to do the character as much justice as possible in the way that made everyone fall in love with them in the first place, you know what has to be done.
Fiege has confirmed that Deadpool 3 will stay true to its roots and be Rated-R. Murdock only got a brief appearance portraying a really good lawyer in his MCU debut, so it’s hard to offer any sort of verdict as to whether he’ll get the same treatment until we see him in the cowl. But his arch-rival got a much bigger introduction during the Hawkeye finale, only to be met with mixed reviews.
In defense of Wilson Fisk, he wasn’t given much to work with and was kind of shoehorned into the finale, probably just to establish the character within the MCU. But even within that one episode, there was something clearly missing. The Kingpin we saw on Netflix was the kind who would smash someone’s head in with a car door. That’s not a character that should be involved in anything anyone would suggest to watch every holiday season.
Maybe it’s impossible for me to expect it both ways. The MCU is a more lighthearted round hole compared to the darker square peg that is Daredevil and its characters. Any attempt to flip back and forth between the two within the same property could feel strange and forced.
It wouldn’t be the first line Marvel has toed with elite precision. Then again, I can’t recall a time when the line has sat between such polar opposites.