Daredevil: Born Again is taking its sweet time making it to Disney+. The slow, slow buildup includes Charlie Cox showing up as Matt Murdock/Daredevil in Spider-Man: No Way Home and She-Hulk, and Vincent D’Onofrio appearing as Wilson Fisk/Kingpin in Hawkeye, and little bits of casting news here and there, including the recent announcement that Jon Bernthal, too, will return as Frank Castle, otherwise known as the Punisher.
What of Foggy and Karen, you ask? No one knows. But slipped into a recent piece about Michael Cuesta directing the premiere episode was a small but important tidbit: the love of Wilson Fisk’s life, Vanessa, will be back—but she won’t be played by Ayelet Zurer.
Vanessa will now be played by Sandrine Holt, who was excellent in The Expanse and Mr. Robot. Her casting in Daredevil: Born Again was announced back in December, though with no details included; Deadline’s writer noted that Holt and Margarita Levieva “may be playing love interests for the leads,” which was right in at least Holt’s case.
It’s entirely possible this is just a very mundane scheduling conflict of some sort; maybe Zurer wasn’t available for the new Daredevil, which begins production this month. It is a whole different story, and the creative team behind it is different than that for Netflix’s Daredevil, which was created by Drew Goddard. Born Again comes from writers and executive producers Matt Corman and Chris Ord, the co-creators of Covert Affairs.
But it’s still just a little weird. And weirder still is the lack of news about Karen (Deborah Ann Woll) and Foggy (Elden Henson), who were as necessary to Daredevil‘s original appeal as Fisk (more so, if you ask me). If you want to make a whole new Daredevil, make a whole new Daredevil. But this half-and-half approach is a bit disconcerting.
Daredevil: Born Again is expected to premiere in spring of 2024.
