DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN Season 1 Included A PUNISHER & ECHO Bottle Episode Before Creative Overhaul

DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN Season 1 Included A PUNISHER & ECHO Bottle Episode Before Creative Overhaul

One of the writers who worked on Daredevil: Born Again, both before and after its creative overhaul, has revealed that a standalone "bottle" episode revolving around The Punisher and Echo was scrapped...

By JoshWilding - Oct 02, 2025 11:10 AM EST
Filed Under: Daredevil
Source: IGN

Daredevil: Born Again underwent a major creative overhaul midway through production. The show's "Head Writers" were replaced, with Dario Scardapane replacing Matt Corman and Chris Ord as showrunner. 

Roles were recast (Ayelet Zurer returned as Vanessa Fisk after initially being replaced by Sandrine Holt), and the series got a new pilot and season finale. That barely scratches the surface of the changes, but among the biggest was making Daredevil: Born Again a direct follow-up to Netflix's Daredevil, despite original plans calling for it to be a reboot. 

Talking to IGN, one of the show's writers, Jesse Wigutow—who worked on the series pre- and post-overhaul—confirmed that Marvel Studios scrapped plans for a standalone "bottle" episode revolving around Jon Bernthal's Punisher and Alaqua Cox's Echo. 

"They were looking to do a kind of singular bottle episode around the Punisher crossing into the Daredevil space," Wigutow confirmed. "This was two, three years ago, and one thing led to another, and I came in to largely focus on that."

"It involved the Punisher and Echo kind of spending an interesting night together — not romantically, but narratively," he teased, noting that the idea ultimately "fell away." Wigutow added, "Who knows, maybe it comes back again. But the story has been a little kind of crooked in terms of the development, and it was part of a former idea."

Wilson Fisk featured heavily in Echo, with a post-credits scene setting the stage for his Mayoral run. Maya Lopez, who debuted in Hawkeye, was largely ignored in Daredevil: Born Again, and while her actions were referenced, she was never named. Daredevil did briefly appear in her show for an action-packed flashback. 

The Echo series went through its fair share of creative issues, and while the character's return in the Man Without Fear's series would have made sense, it appears Maya has now fallen by the wayside. 

Wigutow elaborated on the changes that were made to Daredevil: Born Again when he said, "I think I'm not speaking out of turn in saying that there was an effort to make the show very separate from the Netflix [series] and kind of a new concept."

"I feel like some of that worked well, and some of it didn't. And there were expectations that weren't necessarily being met, and there was a pointed effort and a left turn — to not necessarily return to Netflix, but honor the Netflix origin of the show," he continued. "It is meant to be more aligned with the Netflix show now."

The writer later confirmed that he's one of the writers on Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 and that Season 3's writer's room opens next week. 

Are you disappointed that we missed out on The Punisher and Echo's team-up?

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kylo0607
kylo0607 - 10/2/2025, 11:29 AM
Well, thank god we didn't get any bottle episodes then.

Oh wait.

User Comment Image

This sh*t was painful to get through.
Vigor
Vigor - 10/2/2025, 11:36 AM
@kylo0607 - aw I found it fun
kylo0607
kylo0607 - 10/2/2025, 11:38 AM
@Vigor - What's so fun about having a side episode, which completely kills the momentum of the season by focusing on a B-plot involving the father of a D-list character who absolutely nobody cared for?

Lol.
JackDeth
JackDeth - 10/2/2025, 12:06 PM
@kylo0607 - That was a great episode.
Comicmoviejunki
Comicmoviejunki - 10/2/2025, 12:11 PM
@JackDeth - wrong. It sucked.
WalletsClosed
WalletsClosed - 10/2/2025, 12:23 PM
@kylo0607 - It's not fun at all. This entire series was shit, but this was it's absolute lowest point. Couldn't believe what I was watching
JackDeth
JackDeth - 10/2/2025, 12:25 PM
@Comicmoviejunki - Oh is my opinion wrong? Grow up.
HashTagSwagg
HashTagSwagg - 10/2/2025, 11:41 AM
Damn, watching Punisher get his ass licked by Echo that would have helped the low viewership numbers.
TheVisionary25
TheVisionary25 - 10/2/2025, 11:53 AM
I’m so glad they recognized the apparent error they were making & shifted course from making BA it’s own thing and towards a continuation of the Netflix show especially since they were using D’Onofrio & Cox already…

If you were just gonna start anew then cast fresh aswell rather then use actors that have been tied to a previous popular iteration of the show.

In regards to this idea , I think it sounds like it could have been potentially interesting with this version of Frank & Maya being similar so I could see a surrogate father and daughter/mentor & mentee bond being forged which could have been…

However it seems like it was an idea the previous team was playing with but even then had abandoned before the creative overhaul even happened which is fair.

Anyway , I still felt S1 was solid but I hope 2 & 3 are as good if not better!!.
dracula
dracula - 10/2/2025, 11:54 AM
Though jon said no until the overhall
0bstreperous
0bstreperous - 10/2/2025, 12:05 PM
Couldn't have been worse than what we got o wait they did an "overhaul" so it could have been. Wow
JackDeth
JackDeth - 10/2/2025, 12:07 PM
'DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN' was exactly what the fans were asking for. Nobody on this hell site is going to convince me it wasn't good. I would have loved to see ECHO come back, face paint and new powers included.
TheVisionary25
TheVisionary25 - 10/2/2025, 12:22 PM
@JackDeth - I think her powers are an interesting idea but I do hope they get fleshed out more in the future…

Otherwise Echo was a decent series.
WalletsClosed
WalletsClosed - 10/2/2025, 12:25 PM
It would've had Echo use her reservation powers to one shot Punisher. Thank God this abomination was cut. If only they cut the rest of this awful show

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