Daredevil: Born Again premiered Tuesday night in the form of two episodes. It continues the story of Netflix’s Daredevil and even brings back pretty much all of the original cast. The first two episodes have been reviewed mostly positively and fan reception seems good as well, but there’s a lot of questions to be answered afterwards. Watch out for light spoilers beyond this point.
SPOILERS BELOW.
The Kingpin is as much of a main character as Daredevil in Born Again. Fisk decides to run for mayor, enters the race late, then wins the mayoral chair. He runs a campaign based on being tough on crime, making the streets of New York safe once again, and getting rid of the vigilantes running through the streets.
White Tiger, Daredevil, and even Spider-Man are classified by Fisk as reckless vigilantes that roam the streets, taking the law into their own hands, creating more danger than they save people from. So, the question must be asked, what is the difference between a vigilante and a superhero? What makes Daredevil different from Iron Man, Captain America, or Thor?
In Captain America: Civil War, the Sokovia Accords, a set of laws that says superheroes must register their existence and identities with the government and act only through government regulation, were proposed and put into effect. These laws continued all the way into Avengers: Endgame, although early proponents of the law like Rhodey and Thaddeus Ross began to show some regrets. The Sokovia Accords stayed in effect even beyond Endgame into WandaVision when they’re mentioned by Jimmy Woo. However, in She-Hulk, it is confirmed that the Sokovia Accords were repealed off screen, something that could have been an entire storyline by itself instead of a few lines of dialogue.
In the absence of the Sokovia Accords and now that the world has recovered from the Blip so much that it’s basically never mentioned anymore, the world and public opinion may be reverting back to its old opinions about superheroes, but how the public is differentiating superheroes from vigilantes is still a bit vague.
That puts heroes like Spider-Man in a strange spot. Spider-Man is a unique kind of hero. He is able to fly high above the buildings of New York City with the Avengers, but he can’t stay above them. He has to fall back down into the city itself, swinging with the street level heroes like Daredevil.
In the finale of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange made the entire world forget who Peter Parker is, but everyone still knows Spider-Man. They know him as someone that fought with the Avengers, right next to Iron Man when the Children of Thanos invaded. He fought multiversal villains on the Statue of Liberty, stopped Mysterio, and ended the Vulture’s plot to steal from Stark Industries. Spider-Man is a very high profile hero, but he’s still labeled as a vigilante by Fisk in one of his speeches.
The difference between a vigilante and a superhero could lie in the type of work they do. Superheroes could be defined by the type of heroes that are soaring above the skyscrapers of New York City, facing threats that pose to eliminate the entire world, the entire universe, the entire multiverse even, while vigilantes are the street level style heroes facing actually crime not threats to all of existence. It’s much easier to like a guy that dresses as an American flag to save the country or other countries from powerful villains than it is to like a guy dressed like the actual Devil who beats people so badly they are hospitalized for months.
Vigilantes could even be labeled as those who take the jobs of police officers, not only into their own hands, but altogether take them. Painting them in a negative light becomes much easier when there’s a way to villainize them. It’s exactly what happened in Civil War: the heroes were villainized, but only after there was enough evidence for someone to use against them. With vigilantes, the evidence is just easier to get or skew for one’s own narrative. Still, Spidey is in a bit of an undefinable position.
The remainder of Daredevil: Born Again will hopefully clarify what makes a person a superhero and what makes them a vigilante. Maybe Fisk’s political ambitions won’t stop at being the mayor of New York City. Maybe this is just the beginning and, after the Multiverse Saga concludes, Fisk will even run for president. This is all wild speculation at this point solely for the sake of fun speculation, but, if Fisk continues his campaign against vigilantes into a presidency, it could certainly mutate into a campaign against the X-Men.
What do you think about the distinction between vigilantes and superheroes in the MCU? Let me know in the comments!