[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again Season 1, Episode 9, “Straight to Hell.”]
Daredevil: Born Again‘s first season has ended, leaving plenty of big questions as we look ahead to Season 2, and thankfully, executive producer and series writer Dario Scardapane (who worked on The Punisher‘s Netflix iteration) is offering up plenty of insights.
As viewers will recall, the finale episode, aptly titled “Straight to Hell,” saw Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) enact martial law over the city of New York, as well as set up a curfew and assemble an Anti-Vigilante Task Force (AVTF). After he purposely plunged the city into darkness with a staged blackout, Fisk sent his task force after Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) as he began to learn too much about his and wife Vanessa’s (Ayelet Zurer) illegal activities going on behind the scenes of his mayoral administration.
Matt was aided in escaping the clutches of Fisk’s AVTF in part due to Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) after he was called to assist by Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll). When Matt and Karen separated from the Punisher, they sought information about Fisk’s dealings and discovered his plans to use Red Hook as a freeport.
Meanwhile, Frank got into a lopsided tussle with the AVTF, who tried recruiting him for their cause. Unsurprisingly, Frank refused and was caged for his uncooperative stance. As for Matt and Karen, they found themselves back at Josie’s, having realized they’d enter a losing battle attempting to take Fisk and his cohorts down that evening.
Marvel Television / Disney+
Resolved to return as Daredevil and put an end to Fisk’s villainy, Matt and Karen seemingly devised a plan to recruit an army of their own to go up against Kingpin. Could this mean a Defenders reunion is on the horizon? Or will other street-level heroes find their way into the mix? These questions and more are being answered by Scardapane below.
The finale endures this blackout over New York City, which Wilson Fisk conjures up with his connections. Is it also a metaphor for a new and darker dawn over the city and its inhabitants?
Dario Scardapane: Yeah, all of that stuff is intentional. There’s a weird mashup that happens. Blackouts in New York are a time that freaks people out, and it’s usually a time the powers that be, the mayors, have to step in. So what if a mayor manipulated that? And strangely enough, this is a pretty downbeat ending for a season. The villain has won, and that was completely intentional. The idea that New York is in its darkest hour, and that dawn is coming.
You used practical effects for that gross-out moment when Wilson Fisk crushes the police commissioner Gallo’s (Michael Gaston) head. How far were you able to take it with added blood and gore? Were there any limitations?
I’m a huge fan of practical [effects], and Phil Silvera is similar in our makeup and our special effects [department]. We would like to do as much in camera as possible, and that’s kind of an edict on the show. Let’s be analog. Daredevil is an analog world, and let’s embrace that. That particular scene definitely got a little bit of help, but not a lot. I think [some of the blood] coming down the side of his face from the ears was an addition.
It was fun seeing Matt and Frank back at their usual schtick when they reunite at his apartment, but that tone quickly devolves when Fisk’s AVTF shows up. What went into choreographing the ensuing fight that unfolded there?
Disney+ / Marvel
We knew that we were going to put these two back together, and there was going to be a fight. But we also, part of that is they have really different points of view about how you do this. There was a conversation that [Matt and Frank] had in Season 2 [of the original Daredevil] on the rooftop where “I put ’em down, they stay down” is the Punisher’s ideal, and Matt’s wrestling with being a vigilante. So who more to be the example of where you don’t want to go than Frank. And because we have such rock stars with Phil Silvera, our stunt coordinator and action director, and Justin [Benson] and Aaron [Moorhead], our directors, we got together with the idea to shoot this in two different ways.
There’s the Frank fight and there is the Daredevil fight, and the level of violence is different, the type of moves are different, everything is different, but they’re happening in the same room at the same time. And that’s the joy of working with somebody like Phil Silvera on the page. The story of the fight is always first. That’s what we come up with, and how the story manifests itself through action, and in this case, it ends up with a decision being made regarding Cole North (Jeremy Isaiah Earl).
That story becomes the guiding light. We walked that set with Charlie, Jon, me, the stunt team, Justin, Aaron, and Phil more times than any other two minutes in this whole season. We were talking about it, blocking it, writing it, and prevising it constantly.
By the end of the finale, Matt’s resolved to fight back against Fisk and his anti-vigilante rule over the city. Is there any chance he might recruit some Defenders for his army?
The funny thing is, I don’t feel there’s a huge dividing line between myself and the fans. I am a super fan. I don’t necessarily want everything that the fans want, so I can’t give anything away. But the idea that New York is in a really tough place and that Hell’s Kitchen and Daredevil’s world includes other people, some of whom we have not seen yet… it makes a certain amount of sense that the world is going to expand a little bit. Now, a full-fledged Defenders reunion, I don’t know about that. But the idea that there are people in our world that we haven’t seen yet… I think that’s half fun.
Is there a world in which Matt can continue his lawyering duties in Season 2, or is he going into hiding?
Marvel Television / Disney+
So I think you just kind of put your finger on the central tension of the story as we move through this. If Season 1 was Daredevil struggling to bust out of Matt, and the season ended with a balance between the two of them, what does that mean going forward in a city where being a vigilante is a capital crime? So I think it is a resistance story in Season 2, and I’m not saying anything that wasn’t said at the end of Season 1. So there are a lot of promises in the last three or four minutes of Season 1, and that’s intentional.
You introduced so many new characters this season. Is there anyone you’re particularly excited to dig into more for Season 2?
That was the fun of what we did. You have two camps now. You have the resistance, and you have the administration or Fisk’s City Hall. And there are characters in both of those camps whose stories have just barely started. We have a character like Daniel Blake [Michael Gandolfini] who’s under the wing of Fisk, which has got to be an uncomfortable place to be, we have a journalist, BB (Genneya Walton), who are all inside the administration, you have an ex of Matt, Heather [Margarita Levieva], who’s now the mental health czar for this.
We have Matt’s former partner, Kirsten [Nikki M. James], who is now probably the last bit of legal recourse in New York. You have Cherry [Clark Johnson], a retired cop who’s probably the last bit of the thin blue line. So we have a lot of these characters that really are just now starting their stories in Season 2.
Fans are theorizing that Foggy (Elden Henson) isn’t really dead based on one of his storylines from the comics. Should they let that theory go?
That’s a tough one, and I’m going to dodge that question. There’s mythology inside the comic books about a lot of these characters. Karen Page is long dead and gone in the books. So I think that the responsible, fun thing to do [is say] time will tell. I can’t give any definitive answer on that.
And Bullseye managed to escape without anyone really noticing after his attempted shooting at Fisk’s ball. Is he someone we should be scared of, or is he a potential ally to be made?
So I’m answering your question with kind of a vaguery, but a lot of the fun of where we left things in the finale is that you see Bullseye looking out a broken window. All of those people that you checked in with at the end, there’s a central question. Everybody’s got to pick a side, which side are they going to end up on? And that’s a huge part of what’s coming down the road. And I’m a huge Wilson Bethel fan. I think that what he’s done with Bullseye is super interesting, and I think that we’ve got a pretty great set of cards to play in terms of our characters. We have an embarrassment of riches at this point.
Daredevil: Born Again, Season 2 Premiere, TBA, Disney+