Daredevil: Born Again Team Tells All About Premiere’s ‘Atom Bomb’ of a Twist: ‘It’s a Tough Pill to Swallow’

The following contains full spoilers from the series premiere of Daredevil: Born Again, now streaming on Disney+.

I repeat….

More from TVLine

The following contains full spoilers from the series premiere of Daredevil: Born Again, now streaming on Disney+.

Disney+’s long-anticipated Daredevil: Born Again series got the Nelson, Murdock & Page band back together again!

Well, at least for eight minutes or so.

And then things just went to Hell, no pun intended.

The revival-of-sorts opened with longtime friends Matt Murdock (played by Charlie Cox), Karen Page (Debra Ann Woll) and Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) emerging from their storefront law firm and heading to Josie’s Bar for a night of revelry. When Foggy later ducked out to take a call (from Benny, a panicked witness he had “stashed” in his apartment), Matt peeled off and swung into action as Daredevil. But just as Daredevil closed in on Foggy’s place, he heard Benny say that the intruder simply wanted to know where Foggy was.

Realizing that a trap had been set, Daredevil darted back towards Josie’s, but he would arrive too late. Benjamin Poindexter aka Bullseye had emerged from a steam cloud across from Josie’s and put a bullet into Foggy’s chest. A bereft Karen stayed with Foggy as Daredevil gave chase, trading blow after blow with the Marvel’s Daredevil Season 3 adversary, chasing him up to the roof for more fighting, and eventually lobbing Foggy’s shooter off the roof, to a near-death four stories below.

Foggy, though, had faded. Succumbing to the gunshot wound. Dead at Karen’s side.

Cut to: one year later, where Matt has hung up his supersuit and joined a new law firm. At Poindexter’s sentencing (11 consecutive life sentences, without parole), Karen slips in the back, and we soon learn that Matt peaced out on her for weeks in the wake of Foggy’s murder/Matt’s attempted murder of Bullseye. Karen in turn moved to San Francisco, and has rebuffed Matt’s repeated attempts at outreach.

“I refuse to believe that a tragedy had to destroy everything,” Matt lamented to Karen.

“But it did,” she maintained.

Elsewhere in the first episode: Matt sought face time with longtime adversary Wilson Fisk (whose wife, Vanessa, is quietly and capably lording over his criminal empire while he seeks the mayoralty). Fisk claimed that “after some time away” (watch Echo), he achieved “a new Zen” that led to his pursuit of public office, to help New York. Matt warned the seemingly sincere politician to “stay in his lane” or else; Fisk in turn assured Matt that when he is mayor, there will be “consequences” for anyone running around in “silly costumes.” We also saw Matt and a shrink named Heather (Revenge‘s Margarita Levieva) get roped into a blind date that they then nearly bailed on, only to realize they do in fact have a connection.

FOGGY’S DEATH: BURNING QUESTIONS, ANSWERED!

In the video above (and via excerpts below), series lead Charlie Cox, showrunner Dario Scardapane, executive producer Sana Amanat and the directing team of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (who together helmed Episode 1 as well as 8 and 9) break down the long-held decision to kill off Foggy, how series vet Elden Henson took the news, and how the directors aimed to underscore the magnitude of the loss with the fight sequence that accompanied it….

WAS THE PLAN ALWAYS FOR FOGGY TO DIE?

When production paused for the dual Hollywood strikes in the summer of 2023, Marvel execs took a close look at the six or so episodes that had been filmed for Daredevil: Born Again, and ordered a creative overhaul. Out went co-showrunners Chris Ord and Matt Corman, and in came Dario Scarpadane, a writer and executive producer from Netflix’s The Punisher.

Did Foggy die in that original take on the series, or did that come with the revamp?

“To honestly answer the question, yeah,” Foggy’s fate always was a tragic one, Scarpadane tells TVLine. But the incoming showrunner saw an opportunity to give that dark twist additional heft.

“It was in the material that I inherited, but unfortunately it was off-screen,” he told me. “And I felt really strongly that if we were to do something that earth-shattering and something that was going to cause such a ripple effect in Matt’s life, we had to see it and we had to feel it.”

HOW DID ELDEN HENSON TAKE THE NEWS?

Henson appeared in 38 of 39 episodes of Netflix’s Marvel’s Daredevil series, and Foggy does come first in the Nelson, Murdock & Page law firm name. So as you might imagine, news of his character’s fate was quite the surprise.

“The conversation with Elden was pretty hard,” says showrunner Dario Scardapane — who penned the series’ new premiere episode — “and pretty cool, in the sense that he understood.” That said, “he was bummed about it,” the EP makes clear.

“I think he was just surprised it was happening, so there was a little bit of, ‘Oh, OK. This is awesome,’” executive producer Sana Amanat recalls. “Of course it’s all very, very, very bittersweet, but he really enjoyed being together” with former scene partners Charlie Cox and Debra Ann Woll, if only for those few opening scenes.

WAS REUNITING WITH ELDEN HENSON ‘BITTERSWEET’ FOR CHARLIE COX?

Sharing the screen once again with Marvel’s Daredevil co-stars Debra Ann Woll and Elden Henson, only to bid adieu to the latter after just a few lines of dialogue, was “a real tough pill to swallow,” Charlie Cox tells TVLine.

“When that was talked about in the beginning, I couldn’t quite get my head around that,” the English actor shares. “I often think of Foggy Nelson as the heartbeat of the MCU. He’s integral to Matt’s life, Matt’s history… and Elden has done such a beautiful job with that character for so many years.”

But in reviving the series for Disney+, six years since Marvel’s Daredevil, “I understand … that we need to make a big splash,” Cox notes. “We want to rock the boat early on and draw people in in a new way. [Killing Foggy] is one way to do it, but it’s a big choice.”

HOW DID THE DIRECTORS APPROACH FOGGY’S DEATH SCENE?

When showrunner Dario Scardapane decided to show Foggy’s murder on-screen, it fell upon Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead — the directors of the premiere (as well as Episodes 8 and 9) — to underscore the moment with a Daredevil/Bullseye fight that unfolds inside and above Josie’s, all as Matt’s friend draws what will be his final breaths.

The question for the directors was: “How do we treat this?” says Moorhead. “One, it needs to be an atom bomb on the lives of everybody in this show. It needs to ripple out not just for that episode or that moment [but] through Episode 9. And it does.

“The other thing,” Moorhead continues, “is we wanted to make sure that the moment felt simultaneously highly emotional but it also doesn’t just blow on by. That’s why there’s the punctuation mark of a oner, a one-take [fight scene].

“The effort and conversation that went into that,” amongst everybody, “was absolutely enormous,” Moorhead recalls, “and we think that one of the reasons that people got behind it is they knew how serious what was happening during and at the end of that shot is. Making [Foggy’s death] the end of one of Daredevil’s legendary one-take fight scenes for us was a way to begin his eulogy.”

Want scoop on Daredevil: Born Again, or for any other TV show ? Shoot an email to [email protected], and your question may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line!

var pd_tags = new Array;pd_tags[“15136372-src”]=”poll-oembed-simple”;

Best of TVLine

Sign up for TVLine's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.