Charlie Cox's Daredevil Is About to Be All Over the MCU

Life is but a multiverse in 2022. Five years ago, the mere thought of multiple Spider-Men in the same movie was heresy. How stupid we were! Now, every film studio—plus probably your kid brother and sister—has its own interconnected universe.

Of course no one does it bigger or badder than the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But let's zoom in on one corner of that realm: the string of canceled Netflix shows (Luke Cage, Daredevil, Iron Fist, and the best of them all, Jessica Jones) that may or may not be a part of the MCU. Even more specifically, the place Charlie Cox's Daredevil currently holds in the lineup. Earlier this month, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that both Daredevil and Vincent D’Onofrio's Kingpin will reunite in the upcoming Disney+ series, Echo. The show, of course, is a Hawkeye spinoff focusing on Alaqua Cox's Maya Lopez. THR reports that Echo "will include a plotline in which Daredevil, whose alter ego is blind attorney Matt Murdock, is searching out a former ally." (The ally, by the way, may or may not be Jessica Jones.) The news followed Charlie Cox showing up as Matt Murdock in Spider-Man: No Way Home at the end of 2021, serving as Peter Parker's lawyer. Around the same time, D'Onofrio's Kingpin, also from Netflix's Daredevil series, also hopped into the MCU to wreak havoc in Hawkeye.

At Comic-Con, it immediately became clear that Marvel boss Kevin Feige has plans to scatter Daredevil all over the MCU. And the final trailer for She-Hulk, which debuts this week, ended with a glimpse of Daredevil in a new costume—so it looks like that's where we'll see him next. After that, Feige also announced a full-on reboot featuring the hero, Daredevil: Born Again, starring Cox and D’Onofrio. Get this: the first season of the series will be 18 episodes long. That's three times the size of Moon Knight. That's not enough Daredevil for you? To top it all off, Cox will appear in the upcoming animated series, Spider-Man: Freshman Year, in a voice role. So yeah. Cox's Daredevil is not only returning to the action, but it seems like he'll be a key player going forward.

"We were shocked that we were able to use him," She-Hulk head writer Jessica Gao told The Direct. "When we first heard that he was on the table, I mean, we couldn’t believe it. We kept thinking like, 'Okay, at some point, someone’s gonna say 'Just kidding.' Like, 'It’s a cruel joke, and you actually can’t have him.' And it just kept going and kept going."

With Daredevil's return officially a go, this is a good chance to toss a warning out to the cosmos. Disney? Please don't MCUify Daredevil. The series, as it operated during its three seasons on Netflix, was a refreshingly bloody and R-ish-rated take on the hero—which is exactly how it should be. Disney, of course, is Disney, meaning that if there is a Daredevil TV series under the Mouse House banner, they'll likely want it to be family-friendly enough to have a Daredevil doppelgänger running around the Avengers campus in Disneyland. Can't have Daredevil beating the snot out of Donald Duck, you know! Of course, this may all be a moot point, but it sounds like Marvel is already preparing us for Daredevil's "lighter side."

"What was so fun about bringing [Charlie Cox] and Daredevil into our world is that people have already seen a Daredevil who is very dramatic, little bit on the heavy side, very dark, brooding," Gao said. "It was so fun to be able to do–and we do this with every character cameo from the MCU–is we take them from the environment that you know them from, which is a much more dramatic and action-oriented role, much more on the serious side, and we bring them into our world and they get to play in the tone of She-Hulk."

Oh no. They're going to make Daredevil adorkable. Hopefully, his "lighter side" will be more indicative of She-Hulk than the character's direction moving forward, as there won't be much room for joke-cracking elsewhere. When Cox finally does show up in the Daredevil reboot? Show the man some love. Please.

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