Born Again’ Stops Being Underwhelming

It has been a pretty weird first season of Daredevil: Born Again, a show that allegedly threw out its first draft that everyone hated and made a completely new show. But…it has not seemed like a completely new show, with original problems like a lack of Foggy and Karen happening in the end, and Matt being out of the suit for interminable stretches of time.

What happened here is weird and finally, is about to change tonight. While there are certainly bits and pieces of the original concept that were changed, it’s pretty clear that something like that initial Bullseye fight was added after the fact (or that entire episode), or the intense one-off scene with the Punisher that wasn’t in the original script because Jon Bernthal didn’t even want to show up for that series.

But now in episodes 8 and 9, those are reportedly ones that took place completely after the rework of the original script, and essentially will be all-new content that, guess what? Is going to deliver fans what they want, including the apparent return of both Karen and Frank for major roles, which should carry into next week’s finale.

Of note, the directors of episodes 8 and 9 are Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, who did episode 1 (which again, may not have existed at all before the rework), but directed none of the other ones. Similarly, Dario Scardapane is one of the writers across those same three episodes, with no part in the others. Scardapane is the showrunner with Benson and Moorhead as the lead directors, who were all brought in after the original was killed. You can see how this is not a coincidence and some messiness clearly happened here.

Supposedly season 2 will start from scratch with those three leading it, and as such, should not be a disjointed as season 1 has been. We already know that Deborah Ann Woll’s Karen is returning in full, and she made an odd comment in an interview about Foggy returning as well, possibility in a flashback, but there are also comic storylines where he faked his death. Muse is also supposed to be back after his cut-short storyline where he was killed last week, and may resurrect in some form like again, has happened in the comics.

If season 1 was supposed to fix the original draft of Born Again, it didn’t. Now, that’s down to these final two episodes which it already stands to reason will be significantly better, and then a second season that can fully be its own thing without any baggage from the original. At least we hope so.

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