The second season of Marvel Studios’ “Daredevil: Born Again” (2025) is officially streaming, with the first three episodes available on Disney+. These episodes make it clear the show is in better hands than it was in season one.
Season one was messy with how a new creative team was supposed to complete a storyline with creative elements that weren’t theirs to begin with. This time, showrunner Dario Scardapane and filmmakers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead craft a far stronger storyline, with characters driving the plot.
Compared to the first season, season two, so far, has all of its characters involved in the plot in a way that makes sense. Previously, a handful of the secondary characters, like Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva) and Cherry (Clark Johnson), often did not provide much to the story.
The main characters like Matt Murdock/Daredevil (Charlie Cox), Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) and Wilson Fisk/Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio) are written with great agency. They aren’t standing around seemingly waiting for something to occur like last season.
This season of “Daredevil: Born Again” takes place some time after the events of season one. Kingpin targets Murdock/Daredevil and Page through his Anti-Vigilante Task Force, while the duo works to leak information about his nefarious activities as Mayor of New York City.
Meanwhile, trials are being held for captured vigilantes like Jack Duquesne/Swordsman (Tony Dalton), with Kirsten McDuffie (Nikki M. James) representing them as his attorney. Glenn, hired by Kingpin during last season’s finale, conducts psychological examinations on Duquesne, and she falsely classifies him as a psychopath.
Glenn is still reeling from the trauma of her experience with Muse/Bastian Cooper (Hunter Doohan), and she often takes Kingpin’s side in actions against the vigilantes.
Vanessa Fisk (Ayelet Zurer) is similar to Glenn in that she is consistently anxious about the whereabouts of a violent vigilante. Benjamin Poindexter, also known as Bullseye (Wilson Bethel), is a recurring part of her nightmares.
A technical aspect that has always been a point of discussion when comparing “Daredevil: Born Again” to the original “Daredevil” (2015-18) series, previously on Netflix, is cinematography.
While these shows are canon to one another, they are produced under different showrunners and circumstances. It’s important to acknowledge that. However, the look of “Daredevil: Born Again” is worth criticism.
The first season did have an overall desaturated, and frankly, visually unappealing look compared to the Netflix version. The original show was gorgeous; it felt like a literal comic book coming to life and appearing on a television screen.
Season two does shake this up and has better shot composition, lighting, staging and color usage. It still is not what the original series was, but at least it is a vast improvement over season one.
Fight choreography and stuntwork were also significantly upgraded. The fight scenes with Daredevil in season two have been masterfully done. Without giving anything away, there’s a one-take fight sequence with Daredevil, including other characters that directly mirrors the Netflix series.
It’s hard to say exactly how the rest of season two will unfold in the following weeks.
Right now, “Daredevil: Born Again” is better in nearly every category than its first season.
So far, the series has seemingly foreshadowed an exciting conclusion.
