In case Hawkeye and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law hadn't made it obvious, Daredevil: Born Again was meant to be a fresh start for the Man Without Fear. Yes, some actors were set to remain the same, but for all intents and purposes, it was a reboot.
That led to Marvel Studios casting a new Vanessa Fisk in Sandrine Holt (House of Cards). With Foggy Nelson set to die off-screen, it seems only Charlie Cox, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Jon Bernthal were set to reprise their respective roles as Matt Murdock, Wilson Fisk, and Frank Castle.
However, the creative overhaul led to Ayelet Zurer reprising her role as the Kingpin's wife. Holt shot her scenes as Vanessa, though we'll never get to see what the Mr. Robot star did with the character.
Talking to The Hollywood Reporter, Daredevil: Born Again director Jeffrey Nachmanoff confirmed they didn't keep any pre-strike footage of D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk from those interactions and instead reshot everything.
"To Marvel and the producers’ credit, they did not attempt to drop in anything. We reshot all of those scenes, so I ended up reshooting all of the scenes that had Ayelet in them. By the way, the other actress [Sandrine Holt] is a friend and was terrific. They just made a choice to go back to something that was from the original series. Ayelet is great, and it all worked out really well."
"But it’s painful for some of the people involved because there were changes that didn’t have anything to do with anyone doing anything wrong. The news from above was: 'We want to make sure these two series have more connective tissue.' And to your [opening] point, when I watched the series, I also was pretty surprised that it didn’t feel like the hodgepodge that the process was. But that’s true of many movies. You don’t know how the sausage is made, and you don’t always want to know."
Aaron Moorhead, who, alongside Justin Benson, filmed a new pilot and final two episodes, was also on hand to tease where the Man Without Fear's story goes from here.
"The end of season one is a tragedy of some kind," he explained. "And while it’s not exactly a full-blown stand-up-and-cheer moment as there’s very mixed emotions in those final seconds, you get the sense that there’s a building of a resistance. So that is the kernel of where season two is going to go."
"The board is completely set in which Mayor Fisk has now become Kingpin again, but with New York in his grasp, and then there’s this vigilante thing that now has to go completely underground," Moorhead continued. "So that’s where we start, and we’re going to unfold all of that very, very quickly. It’s a resistance tale."
The hope is that Daredevil's resistance army will add some familiar faces like Maya Lopez and Jessica Jones, though it remains to be seen how many other vigilantes will be looking to take the fight to Mayor Fisk (where Spider-Man is in all this isn't clear).
All episodes of Daredevil: Born Again are now streaming on Disney+.