The likes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Daredevil, and Inhumans were produced by Marvel Television, a division that had as much involvement with Marvel Studios as The CW did with the DCEU. Now, with Kevin Feige in charge of everything, questions about the canonicity of those TV shows continue to be raised by fans.
Anson Mount turned up as a comic-accurate Black Bolt in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, while Charlie Cox's Daredevil and Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin have recently appeared in the likes of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and Hawkeye. This has definitely muddied the waters.
Wilson Fisk is now considerably more powerful than his Netflix predecessor, for example, tearing a car door off with ease! As a result, it seems safe to assume that, while the actors are the same, these are the MCU's Variants of the characters and not the Daredevil and Kingpin we saw a few years back on Disney+'s rival streaming service.
During a recent interview with inews.co.uk, Cox actually dropped the V-Bomb!
"I don’t think it’s a different character. I just think it’s maybe a different period of his life. I don’t think my interpretation will change – they hired the same actor. We’re saying this is a whole new...era, or Variant?" the actor said, pausing, before adding, "I haven’t read the scripts, so I don’t know. But, like, it’s part of the Multiverse?"
"The only way I’ll change is if, tonally, the show is very different," Cox concluded.
Reading between the lines here, we'd expect some very vague references to the past in Daredevil: Born Again, but, as Cox has previously said, not Daredevil season 4!
This type of fresh start makes sense and is a great way of finding a balance between continuing the stories of characters fans love with the same actors, while not forcing Marvel Studios to be beholden to Marvel Television's creative decisions. We've actually heard that Chloe Bennet will return as Quake in a future project, but don't expect her to have that Inhuman backstory.
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