Daredevil: Born Again showrunner Dario Scardapane inherited Season 1 and was tasked with fixing a series that wasn't working. Now, he's confirmed that next month's Season 2 will wrap up the Mayor Wilson Fisk ahead of a very different third batch of episodes in 2027.
Parallels between real-life events in the United States and the Kingpin's rise to power were plentiful last year, with the cast forced to dance around questions about President Donald Trump's return to the White House.
It seems inevitable that Fisk's Anti-Vigilante Task Force roaming the streets of New York will be compared to ICE, and Scardapane seems understandably eager to move on from the politics of it all (given when the show was produced, its mirroring of real-life is largely coincidental).
"The playbook is pretty well established, so when we were writing this stuff we were like, 'Here's what he does.' The anti-vigilante task force is part of the comics. We built them and costumed them based on the comics," he told SFX. "There are a few sequences that were shot a year ago that could be off the news, and it’s weirding all of us out."
"I have mixed feelings," Scardapane said of the show's political energy. "Stan Lee once said that he wanted to make his comic books a reflection of the world you saw outside your window. Then I also believe that what's fun about the genre, and definitely fun in working with superheroes, is you're dealing with huge archetypes, almost mythological characters, and that’s fun writing."
"Getting into the realm of politics, New York politics, the Game of Thrones intrigue behind the scenes. Okay, that’s fun too, but as it becomes almost too topical, it feels like it’s going away from the large, mythological genre stuff."
"So as we finish up the Mayor Fisk run with season 2," the showrunner confirmed, "as that storyline comes to its inevitable conclusion, what we’re doing going forward feels more like a return to the [Frank] Miller-era comics. So yeah, it was fun to play in the realm of politics, but I like something a little more street level, personally."
Frank Miller's work inspired pretty much every Daredevil run that followed it, including those by Brian Michael Bendis, Ed Brubaker, and Chip Zdarsky. Vincent D'Onofrio has already hinted that he'll be back for Season 3, but with The Hand set to appear in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, we'd bet on 'ol Hornhead clashing with them and potentially even reuniting with Elektra.
There's also still a good chance that, for at least part of the season, we'll find Daredevil behind bars. Heck, The Kingpin may even remain in the Mayor's office to set up that rumoured crossover movie, albeit with him potentially taking a backseat as his power in New York is somehow diminished.
In Daredevil: Born Again, survival, resistance and redemption collide as the battle for the soul of New York begins. In Season 2, Mayor Wilson Fisk crushes New York City underfoot as he hunts down public enemy number one, the Hell’s Kitchen vigilante known as Daredevil.
But beneath the horned mask, Matt Murdock will try to fight back from the shadows to tear down the Kingpin’s corrupt empire and redeem his home. Resist. Rebel. Rebuild.
Daredevil: Born Again returns to Disney+ on March 24.