Marvel knows fans will go either way on this choice, but top brass lay out their reasoning.
Giovanni Rufino/Marvel
Warning: This article contains spoilers fromDaredevil: Born Againepisodes 1 and 2.
Then all hell breaks loose in Hell’s Kitchen.
Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock in ‘Daredevil: Born Again’.Credit:Giovanni Rufino/Marvel
Benjamin Poindexter (Wilson Bethel), a.k.a.
Bullseye, a familiar antagonist from the Netflix era, makes an explosive entrance onDaredevil: Born Again.
“So how do you deal with that?”
Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), and Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) in ‘Daredevil: Born Again’.Giovanni Rufino/Marvel
Brad Winderbaum, the head of Marvel TV, goes deeper in unpacking this moment.
“to make it be righteous, he has to assume a certain amount of toxicity of his own.
The battles that he wages for ultimate justice often come with collateral damage.
Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) and Kirsten Mcduffie, ADA (Nikki M. James) in ‘Daredevil: Born Again’.Giovanni Rufino/Marvel
And that felt like a really crucial core to Matt’s character arc and toDaredevil: Born Again.
The death of Foggy was something that we really agonized over.
It’s not totally dissimilar tothe death of Gambit inX-Men ‘97.
Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), and Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson).Giovanni Rufino/Marvel
So it wasn’t something we took lightly.”
That’s why, Amanat points out, they brought Poindexter back.
The only reason he would ever do that is if his best friend dies," she says.
That is the only thing that made sense for us narratively to be able to tell that story."
It’s the story that now defines Matt’s arc onDaredevil: Born Againseason 1, and perhaps beyond.
“It sends Matt into a real state of freeze,” Winderbaum says.
Everyone at Marvel seems to know the death of Foggy could be a risky move.
Amanat recognizes how even their own internal conversations went to either end of the reactionary spectrum.
“He’s a man in grief,” she says of Matt.
It’s heartbreaking to me that we had to do that.
It was really, really tough.
But at this point, 10 years later, we have to move forward.
We have to be able to start telling a new narrative."
At the very least, this won’t be the last we see of Foggy, she confirms.
“He and Deborah are coming back for season 2 in different ways,” Winderbaum adds.
(Daredevil: Born Againseason 2 has already set up shop in New York.)
“But we’re excited to work with him again….
I don’t see aDaredevilseason without him in some regard.”
