The first two episodes of Daredevil: Born Again are now available to stream on Disney+, and the series premiere, "Heaven's Half Hour," begins with a shocking (well, depending on how much you've been keeping up with set photos and rumor posts) twist that echoes through the entire season.
If you haven't had a chance to watch yet, be warned of major spoilers from this point on.
The episode (you'll find a full breakdown here) gets underway with Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) and Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) leaving their law firm to go for a drink in Josie's Bar, but this happy scene is violently cut short when Benjamin "Dex" Poindexter, aka Bullseye (Wilson Bethel), shoots Foggy through the chest with a sniper rifle.
As Daredevil and Bullseye battle on the rooftop above, Nelson bleeds out and dies in Karen's arms. Murdock hears his best friend's heart stop, and gives in to vengeance by dropping the villain to his "death."
Though some did see this coming, others are not too happy about Foggy being killed off in this manner. As it turns out, Cox wasn't always sure it was the right move, either.
During an interview with TV Line, the KIN actor admitted that Nelson's death was a "tough pill to swallow."
“When that was talked about in the beginning, I couldn’t quite get my head around that. I often think of Foggy Nelson as the heartbeat of the MCU. He’s integral to Matt’s life, Matt’s history… and Elden has done such a beautiful job with that character for so many years.”
“I understand that we need to make a big splash,” Cox adds. “We want to rock the boat early on and draw people in in a new way. [Killing Foggy] is one way to do it, but it’s a big choice.”
Co-director Aaron Moorhead also weighed-in on the decision to kill Foggy off so quickly.
“It needs to be an atom bomb on the lives of everybody in this show. It needs to ripple out not just for that episode or that moment [but] through Episode 9. And it does. The other thing is we wanted to make sure that the moment felt simultaneously highly emotional but it also doesn’t just blow on by. That’s why there’s the punctuation mark of a oner, a one-take [fight scene]."
“The effort and conversation that went into that was absolutely enormous,” Moorhead continues, “and we think that one of the reasons that people got behind it is they knew how serious what was happening during and at the end of that shot is. Making [Foggy’s death] the end of one of Daredevil’s legendary one-take fight scenes for us was a way to begin his eulogy.”
What did you make of the decision to kill off Foggy Nelson? Drop us a comment down below.
In Marvel Television's Daredevil: Born Again, Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), a blind lawyer with heightened abilities is fighting for justice through his bustling law firm, while former mob boss Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio) pursues his own political endeavors in New York. When their past identities begin to emerge, both men find themselves on an inevitable collision course.
The show also stars Margarita Levieva, Deborah Ann Woll, Elden Henson, Zabryna Guevara, Nikki James, Genneya Walton, Arty Froushan, Clark Johnson, Michael Gandolfini, with Ayelet Zurer and Jon Bernthal. Dario Scardapane is on board as showrunner.
Episodes are directed by Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead, Michael Cuesta, Jeffrey Nachmanoff, and David Boyd; and executive producers are Kevin Feige, Louis D’Esposito, Brad Winderbaum, Sana Amanat, Chris Gary, Dario Scardapane, Christopher Ord & Matthew Corman, and Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead.