It’s been seven years since Daredevil’s third and final season wrapped up on Netflix, but the Man Without Fear is finally back in his own series again in Disney+’s Daredevil: Born Again. And he’s not alone, with plenty of familiar faces like Foggy Nelson, Karen Page, Kingpin and even The Punisher all back as well… which means there’s a lot of characters and lot of history you might need a refresher on, beyond recalling the fact that Daredevil is great at fighting in hallways!
So before Matt Murdock is Born Again, here’s everything you need to know about Daredevil – and his friends and enemies – so far! (And if you don’t feel like reading, you can also watch the video at the top of this page…)
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The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen
As a child, Matt Murdock bravely saved an elderly man from being hit by a truck, only to be blinded by spilled toxic material in the accident. However, he soon discovered all of his other senses were now heightened to a remarkable degree. And after his father, small-time boxer “Battlin’” Jack Murdock, was killed by mobsters for failing to take a fall, Matt was motivated to continue to hone his own fighting skills – and was briefly taught by the mysterious Stick, a skilled and determined warrior who was also blind. Matt grew up to become a New York City lawyer who moonlights as the so-called Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, AKA Daredevil, a masked vigilante who steps in when the law can’t or won’t. At first, Matt wore a simple black costume and mask, but eventually upgraded to protective body armor and a multi-function trick billy club designed by the gifted but troubled Melvin Potter.
Matt and his best friend since college, Foggy Nelson, began their own law practice, Nelson & Murdock, and ended up hiring one of their first clients, Karen Page, as their one and only employee, with the three quickly forming a close bond. However, after Foggy found out Matt’s secret identity, it began to put a strain on both their friendship and partnership.
Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin of Crime
Though he’s battled various thugs and ninjas – so many ninjas! – Daredevil’s primary and most persistent enemy has been Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin. Once a meek boy, Fisk’s inner rage first manifested when he used a hammer to kill his abusive father when he was 12 years old. He then grew up to become a cunning and powerful crime lord able to manipulate and coerce like few others, while also proving more than capable of using his formidable strength to get physically involved when angered or provoked.
Fisk originally kept himself out of the public eye, but after reporter Ben Urich began to investigate him, he attempted to fashion himself as a benevolent man of the people. He then discovered Ben had spoken to Fisk’s mother as part of his investigation, and went to Ben to kill him.
Though he treats most people around him as disposable pawns, Fisk wasn’t only just highly protective when it came to his mother, as he fell head over heels for art dealer Vanessa Marianna and was willing to do anything to protect her. Seriously, you do not want to put Vanessa in danger or you’re going to regret it.
When the law began to close in on him, Fisk eventually sent Vanessa away for her own protection. And though he quickly was broken out of captivity by his men after his first arrest, he was taken back in shortly after thanks to Daredevil’s intervention, as the two physically fought for the first time.
Elektra, the Punisher, and the Defenders
Compared to Fisk’s source of stability through Vanessa, Matt’s love life has been more chaotic. He had a brief fling with Claire Temple, a nurse who frequently helped him with the medical attention he so often required. Then he and Karen began to explore the possibility of their relationship becoming more romantic only for that to be derailed by the return of Matt’s college girlfriend, Elektra, who turned out to actually be a highly trained assassin trying to bring Matt in on a plan, alongside their mutual mentor, Stick, to stop the group known as The Hand. Elektra was killed battling The Hand and then resurrected by The Hand, though now corrupted and working with them, as they intended to use her as part of their ancient quest to achieve immortality. Look, we’ve all been there, right?
Driven by his strong Catholic beliefs, Matt has always refused to kill his enemies, but then encountered another vigilante who very much went out of their way to kill those he deemed irredeemable in the form of Frank Castle, the Punisher. After multiple confrontations, Daredevil ended up saving the Punisher from mobsters, and in the aftermath came to better understand the dark events that motivated Castle. After Castle was arrested, Matt’s belief in the importance of the legal system and the right to a fair trial led him and Foggy to serve as Frank’s defense attorneys. After Castle escaped from prison, he ultimately surprised Matt by appearing to help him dispatch a group of Hand ninjas in the same fight where Elektra was killed – the last time to date we saw Punisher and Daredevil interact. (We already know Punisher will show up in BornAgain, though!)
By the end of The Defenders series, Matt had survived, but everyone initially believed he was dead – something he allowed for a bit, as he came out of the experience badly hurt.
With Matt’s double life and the escalating unreliability it caused leading to increasing tension with Foggy, the two split up as law partners, with Foggy taking a job with the high profile firm of Hogarth, Chao & Benowitz while Karen had already left to pursue a new career as a reporter. Following his rift with Foggy, Matt then decided it was time to finally come clean with Karen about the reasons for his increasingly strange and erratic behavior, i.e. that he’s Daredevil.
Soon after, Elektra’s resurrection and the danger New York was put in as a result of The Hand’s plans led Matt to join forces with his fellow street-level heroes Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Danny Rand as the Defenders… in what unfortunately turned out to be a pretty lackluster team-up story. Seriously, how can you waste Sigourney Weaver with such a whatever character like that?!
By the end of The Defenders series, Elektra had killed Stick and then an entire building fell on Matt and Elektra after they battled, just as he was beginning to get through to the woman beneath The Hand’s manipulation. Elektra’s fate remains unknown even now, but while Matt survived, everyone initially believed he was dead – something he allowed for a bit, as he came out of the experience badly hurt and even briefly feeling suicidal.
Daredevil: Season 3 (Born Again!)
This led into Season 3 of Daredevil. Matt was nursed back to health by the nuns at the orphanage where he grew up, including Sister Maggie – who Matt eventually discovered was his own mother, who’d strayed from the church for a brief period, during which she’d had a relationship with his father. (Funny enough, this season was inspired by the Born Again Daredevil comic story more than the new Disney+ show appears to be!)
Foggy and Karen eventually learned Matt was alive but discovered he was in an especially dark and nihilistic head space, as he declared his old life was over. And he had abandoned wearing his red Daredevil costume for a variation on the simplistic black gear he’d worn during his early vigilante days.
Matt’s darkness then got a new focus after Wilson Fisk managed to get himself out of prison and moved to cushy house arrest inside a penthouse, thanks to making a deal with the FBI to give them names and information on other criminals and then faking an attempt on his own life by a fellow prisoner to convince his captors he wasn’t safe there. Now believing Fisk had too much power and control to ever be truly brought to justice, Matt planned to cross a line he never had before: He was going to kill him once and for all.
During this period, the savvy Fisk managed to discover that Matt Murdock was Daredevil, but rather than reveal that information to the public, he instead diabolically set out to destroy both halves of his enemy’s life – first by attempting to frame Matt as a corrupt lawyer and then by having someone impersonate Daredevil and maliciously kill innocents, including Matt’s friend and confidant, Father Lantom, who sacrificed himself to protect the intended target, Karen.
The imposter Daredevil was Benjamin “Dex” Poindexter, an FBI agent with psychopathic, murderous tendencies coupled with incredible abilities when it came to hitting targets dead on and also using almost any object as a lethal weapon. And if this guy is sounding familiar – you know, like maybe someone Colin Farrell once played in a movie – Dex is indeed the MCU version of the Daredevil comic book villain Bullseye, even though we haven’t seen him use that name just yet.
Having blackmailed or paid off various FBI agents to get them into his servitude, while also providing intel so the organization at large could bust his own criminal rivals – all the better for him to take back control – Fisk was exonerated for his earlier crimes. And after years apart, he also was finally reunited with Vanessa, who returned to New York. She’d already known about his criminal life, though not many of the specifics, but now convinced him to discard any last barriers between them and accept her fully participating in all of his endeavors. And she quickly proved she really was the perfect woman for him by immediately ordering her first hit. Awww, see, Wilson and Vanessa really are soulmates!
That hit was on FBI Agent Ray Nadeem, who felt immense guilt for letting Fisk turn him and had agreed to testify against him, which both threatened to send Fisk back to prison and brought Matt and Foggy back together as lawyers, as they began to mend fences. Except Fisk then threatened jury members, leading to him not being indicted – and then Vanessa’s order led to Dex killing Nadeem.
Now more convinced than ever Fisk was untouchable, Matt decided to use the night of Wilson and Vanessa’s wedding to make his attack and used Dex as a distraction, turning Dex against Fisk by revealing Fisk been behind the murder of Julie, a woman who rejected Dex after she found out he was stalking her, but who Dex remained obsessed with. Now also out for revenge against Fisk, Dex drove himself and Julie’s frozen corpse – seriously, this guy is not well – to the wedding, causing murderous mayhem when he arrived.
At the same time, it turned out Nadeem, knowing he was marked for death, had recorded a full confession that included specific details about Fisk’s recent crimes and accomplices, which would be evidence admissible against him.
Matt realized he could use Fisk’s love of Vanessa as leverage, making a deal with Fisk both to keep his identity a secret and to not go after Foggy and Karen.
Inside Fisk’s penthouse apartment, Daredevil, Dex and Kingpin had a furious three-way fight, which eventually went down to two participants after Fisk broke Dex’s back. Daredevil finally got the better of Fisk and had him at his mercy, ready to kill him, only to be swayed by Vanessa pleading for her husband.
Though Fisk, not wanting to be locked up again, still tried to goad Matt into killing him, threatening Matt’s friends if he was left alive, Matt then realized he could use Fisk’s love of Vanessa as leverage, making a deal with Fisk both to keep his identity a secret and to not go after Foggy and Karen, telling him he’d make sure Vanessa would take the fall for ordering the hit on Nadeem if Fisk broke their terms. Fisk agreed.
As for Dex, he was arrested as well, and in prison agreed to experimental surgery to try to repair his back via the use of Cogmium steel as a reinforcement for his mangled spine.
Having gotten through his darkest days, Matt finally decided to return to his old life completely, not only reteaming with Foggy, but reopening their practice as the renamed Nelson, Murdock & Page, telling Karen that she might not be a lawyer but they could make use of her terrific investigative skills.
As for the Punisher, to keep things at least a bit more focused, we won’t go into too much detail on all of Frank Castle’s adventures during this same period that occurred through two seasons and 26 episodes of The Punisher series, but last we saw him, Frank had rejected an offer from the CIA to take assassination jobs for them and was sticking with doing what he does best.
And his show also reinforced the bond and friendship Frank had previously established with the sympathetic Karen, who always seemed much more willing to accept the idea of sometimes outright killing bad guys than either Matt or Foggy – and even had once proved she was capable of doing just that herself with Fisk’s righthand man, Wesley, though it had weighed heavily on her in the aftermath.
Hawkeye, Echo, Spider-Man and She-Hulk
What happened in the years following the formation of Nelson, Murdock & Page is murky, but we do know that both Daredevil and Kingpin were among the 50% of the population who survived Thanos’ snap and that at some point, under circumstances that remain unknown, Fisk managed to be legally freed from prison again. As he once more rebuilt his criminal empire, Kingpin betrayed one of his associates, Tracksuit Mafia leader William Lopez, purposely leaking information to have Lopez taken out by Clint Barton, AKA Hawkeye, who at this point was using the identity of Ronin and in the midst of his own Punisher-style killing spree.
Having long been in her life as her imposing yet protective so-called “uncle,” Kingpin also began to use William’s daughter, Maya, AKA Echo, as an increasingly trusted enforcer, while it seemed that he had grown even more powerful and influential, with random New York police officers now acquiescing to him on sight.
Fisk became particularly impressed by Maya when she managed to hold her own in a fight with none other than his old enemy, Daredevil. This led him to hone her lethal skills even further in the aftermath. All the while, in his own, twisted way, Fisk truly did care for her.
Beyond that one tussle with Maya, which confirmed he had once again begun wearing the full red Daredevil costume again during the years following Thanos’ snap, the specifics of Matt Murdock’s life during this time period haven’t been revealed. Later, months after the snap was undone by the Avengers, Spider-Man’s true identity as Peter Parker was revealed to the world by the late Quentin Beck, AKA Mysterio, who also framed Peter for his own crimes. Needing legal help, Peter turned to Matt, who was able to help exonerate him on the murder charges he was accused of, because, say it with us…“I’m a really good lawyer.”
As for Kingpin’s post-Avengers: Endgame escapades, after trying to kill Hawkeye in a quest for revenge, Maya finally found out the truth about her father’s death from Clint Barton – and then shot Kingpin right in his freaking Fisk face as payback.
But twas just a flesh wound, some eye damage aside, and Fisk got better, following Maya to Oklahoma and attempting to mend fences with her to bring her back into the fold, even offering to give her control of his organization. And, in a demented show of affection, he also tried to gift her with the hammer he had killed his abusive father with when he was a boy.
When that didn’t work, now filled with rage thanks to her rejecting him as a father figure, he set out to kill Maya’s loved ones, only to be stopped by a newly powered-up Maya, who forced him to confront the trauma of his childhood, while she made her own last loving attempt to get him to move past it all and perhaps finally become a better man.
Rattled by the experience, Fisk returned home, watching a news report about the search for the next New York Mayor mentioning there was no clear frontrunner, which clearly sparked inspiration.
Meanwhile, with his former costume maker arrested years before by the FBI after he made Dex’s copycat suit for Kingpin, Matt turned to the Los Angeles-based Luke Jacobson to make him new outfits – including one in yellow and red, just like Daredevil’s original comic book look. This trip to LA also brought him into contact with a fellow lawyer, Jennifer Walters, the She-Hulk, who didn’t like him at all at first. But then she began to change her tune…
And though an ongoing relationship wasn’t in the cards due to their geographic distance, Matt still managed to have a meal with Jen’s family during a return visit to LA. And he even met the Hulk and that weird son Hulk turned out to have… that maybe they’ll get back to dealing with one day.
Though we’re guessing neither Hulk or his son will be a part of the story, we’ll see what’s next for Matt Murdock and his alter ego in Daredevil: Born Again!
