It's impressive that, after all the behind-the-scenes issues it encountered in its first season, Daredevil: Born Again arrived on Disney+ relatively unscathed and met a warm reception from fans. Things could've been very different if the plans of the original iteration of the return of Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) and Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio) had gone ahead, with the idea of the show being a soft reboot of the Man Without Fear and not a follow-up to the beloved Netflix series fans had fought to see back in some fashion.
The reboot that never came to be only had the returning talents of Cox and D'Onofrio in the mix, with any other supporting cast members from the Netflix version no longer attached. To explain away this glaring issue that fans would've undoubtedly expressed their disappointment with, the lead horn head himself has revealed that the show would look to one of the MCU's most extravagant and out-there shows to get the message across that this Daredevil and Kingpin were the same, only slightly different.
Appearing on the Deadline Crew Call podcast, where he also shared details about the return of Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter), Cox revealed that variants were heavily included in the initial show to support such a bold creative choice. That was until it was scrapped during filming and rebuilt with core cast members returning, instead.
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"One of the things the original team wanted to do was, they wanted to keep Vincent and I. They wanted to keep us. They didn't want to alienate an audience that hadn't watched the show. So, they wanted it to kind of be a reset," Cox explained. "So there was a kind of a conversation about it being almost like a variant, you know, in the Loki show, we talk about these variants. It was almost like a variant, and we never said that, but it was almost like a variant. So, it was another version of these characters existing in a world."
Given the various avenues and alternate routes Marvel Studios have taken with some of their heroes (X-Men and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man being prime examples), Cox confessed that the idea just didn't work. More importantly, it wouldn't have been what the dedicated fans wanted to see. "That's a valid choice, it's a fun idea. The problem became that, we found that, whenever I said something that was in contrast to what we had shot in the past, people thought I was lying. They didn't think it was a variant; they thought I was being disingenuous. It was a nice idea, it just didn't pan out."
We'll have to see how Matt continues to fit into the MCU when Daredevil: Born Again returns next year. For now, though, here's every other upcoming MCU film and TV show to ensure you don't miss out.
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