Daredevil: Born Again just opened with a shocking death, and it turns out it wasn’t in the original script!
Caution: This article contains SPOILERS for the premiere of Daredevil: Born Again.
After an almost seven-year wait, the Man Without Fear finally returned as Daredevil: Born Again premiered on March 4 on Disney+. The opening scene showed Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) with his longtime friend Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) and partner Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) hanging out at a bar and having a good time.
A client of Foggy’s called, needing help with someone stalking him. Matt changed into his costumed identity of Daredevil to try and find the guy, only to discover too late it was a ruse by twisted former FBI agent Benjamin Poindexter (Wilson Bethel), who was now the costumed killer Bullseye.
Bullseye shot Foggy point blank and was about to kill Karen when Matt arrived. The pair had a brutal fight with Bullseye killing almost a dozen random people. The pair brawled it out to a rooftop as Matt heard Foggy’s heartbeat stop. That had him dropping Bullseye off the roof, which he shockingly survived.
The show then cut to a year later as Matt and Karen had become distant following Foggy’s death and Matt had given up his Daredevil identity. He was working for a new law firm and dealing with Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), becoming mayor of New York.
Killing off Foggy is a shocking move for the show, especially in the opening scene. As it turns out, this was the plan, just not in the way it turned out.
When did they come up with killing Foggy?
It’s well known that Daredevil: Born Again had some behind-the-scenes turmoil. The show was in production in 2023 when the Hollywood strikes delayed it. That gave Disney time to look at the filmed footage and realize it wasn’t working.
Thus, original showrunners Chris Ord and Matt Corman were removed and replaced by Dario Scardapane. He began retooling the show, which reportedly wouldn’t even have had Matt in costume as Daredevil until the fourth episode.
Among the changes was that originally, Foggy and Karen weren’t going to be major players. Speaking to TV Line, Scardapane revealed that while Foggy’s death was planned, it wouldn’t have been on screen.
"It was in the material that I inherited, but unfortunately, it was off-screen. 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.”
Scardapane admitted it was hard breaking it to Henson that he’d be returning to the role only to die in the first scene. “Of course, it’s all very, very, very bittersweet, but he really enjoyed being together.”
The producer added that it was no coincidence Foggy’s death ended the show’s trademark one-take fight scenes to act as an “eulogy.”
The death of Foggy shakes Matt up as the second episode has him defending an accused cop killer, Hector Ayala (Kamar de los Reyes), who’s really the crimefighter, the White Tiger. Yet Foggy’s death proves that this new take on Daredevil isn’t shying away from shocking viewers and making it the wildest MCU show yet.
Daredevil: Born Again airs new episodes Tuesdays on Disney+.