After years of uncertainty and rumors relating to Charlie Cox's potential return as Matt Murdock in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the star of Netflix's scrapped Daredevil series was given the opportunity to reprise the role for a brief scene in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Along with Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire's respective returns as "Variant" Spider-Men, Cox's part in the movie was actually leaked ahead of time, but the actor was still forced to lie about his involvement during interviews.
Now, Cox has revealed exactly when he got the call from Kevin Feige, and it seems he had to keep his secret for just under a full year.
"I got the call midway through lockdown, Summer of 2020, and we filmed Spider-Man in March of 2021... so I had to keep it secret for almost a year. So yeah, it's been intense," the actor told HeyUGuys. "It's a relief to be able to talk about it. Y'know, getting that phone call was a life-changing moment, really. My involvement with that character and the MCU was dead and buried, I hadn't heard anything for a couple of years and so I'd moved on. It was incredibly unexpected and out of the blue."
As it turns out, Feige has a pretty good poker face himself! Before the Marvel Studios boss officially reached out to Cox, he went to see him in a play he was preforming in with Loki starTom Hiddleston, and never once mentioned the possibility of the actor returning as Daredevil.
"I did a play in 2019 with Tom Hiddleston and Kevin Feige came to see our play. And, Y'know, I went and shook hands with him and said hi and he said how much he enjoyed the play. Never mentioned Daredevil or anything like that. So it turns out he's a very good liar as well (laughs)."
We still don't know when we'll see Cox back as Murdock/The Man Without Fear, but he's rumored to appear in several upcoming Disney+ shows before getting his own solo series or feature.