‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Launches With 7.5 Million Views on Disney+
By Joe Otterson
“Daredevil: Born Again” enjoyed a strong launch on Disney+.
According to the Mouse House, the Marvel Television series drew 7.5 million views in its first five days of availability on Disney+, with a view defined as total stream time divided by runtime. That makes it the biggest streaming debut on the platform this year. The show officially launched on March 4.
Disney does not regularly release viewership information about its streaming shows, so exact comparisons are difficult. But for some context, it was previously reported that the Sterling K. Brown drama “Paradise” drew 7 million views across its first nine days of streaming on Hulu and Disney+ earlier this year. The first episode of fellow Marvel show “Agatha All Along” hit 9.3 million views in its first week of availability in September 2024.
“Daredevil: Born Again” saw the return of Charlie Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio, Deborah Ann Woll, Elden Henson, Wilson Bethel, and Jon Bernthal after they had all previously starred in the Marvel-Netflix series “Daredevil.” Additional cast members include Margarita Levieva, Zabryna Guevara, Nikki M. James, Genneya Walton, Arty Froushan, Clark Johnson, Michael Gandolfini, and Ayelet Zurer.
Cox once again stars as the titular Matt Murdock, a blind lawyer who spends his nights battling criminal in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen as the vigilante Daredevil. D’Onofrio plays legendary Marvel supervillain Wilson Fisk, a.k.a Kingpin.
The show has enjoyed positive reviews as well, with Aramide Tinubu writing in her review for Variety, “This ‘Daredevil’ revival is wonderfully complex. The show takes a sledgehammer to its former Netflix world, allowing the titular character and those orbiting him to transform under the weight and pain of time.”
Dario Scardapane serve as the series showrunner and executive producer. Kevin Feige executive produces along with Louis D’Esposito, Brad Winderbaum, Sana Amanat, Chris Gary, Matt Corman & Chris Ord, and Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead. Benson and Moorhead also directed for the series along with Michael Cuesta, Jeffrey Nachmanoff, and David Boyd.
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‘Daredevil: Born Again’: When the Next Episode Releases on Disney Plus
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Stream the first two episodes of the Marvel series while you wait.
Charlie Cox stars as Matt Murdock/Daredevil.
Daredevil: Born Again debuted its first two episodes on March 4, and the Marvel revival will continue its run in the month of March and into April.
It’s been roughly 10 years since Netflix launched its Daredevil TV show and about three years since Marvel announced it would bring Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock back to our screens. The series features Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk/Kingpin, Jon Bernthal’s Punisher and the original show’s versions of Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) and Karen Page (played by Deborah Ann Woll).
Executive producer Sana Amanat and showrunner/executive producer Dario Scardapane shared that fans will see that the new series has a connective thread to the first iteration but is also its own story.
Returning viewers to the streets of New York City, Daredevil: Born Again kicks off with Matt, Foggy and Karen in a good space, and Fisk pursuing the political ambitions he put into motion at the end of Echo. As crime levels increase, friction between Kingpin and Daredevil reignites but a new villain comes on the scene. It will be a battle of the dark sides, within and in the streets.
According to production notes for the series, both men will have inner conflict. “We had to do parallel paths. Both tried so hard to be something else: ‘I’m Matt Murdock. I’m just a lawyer. I’m not Daredevil anymore.’ ‘I’m Wilson Fisk, mayor of New York City. I’m doing good things for people,'” Scardapane said. “We wanted to bring that tension to a place where they literally can’t sustain it and things start to unravel and explode.”
Keep reading to learn when and where to watch season 1 of Marvel’s Daredevil: Born Again.
Read more: The TV Shows We Can’t Wait to See in 2025
The first two episodes of Daredevil: Born Again premiered on Disney Plus on March 4 and episode 3 will follow the same schedule, dropping on Tuesday, March 11 at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT.
Season 1 has nine episodes, but we will have to wait for season 2’s next batch of episodes as the story has been split into two installments. If you want to catch up with the three seasons of Marvel’s Daredevil that originally streamed on Netflix, you can binge all of it on Disney Plus. Get a standalone subscription for the streaming service or sign up for one of the Disney Bundles.
Disney Plus starts at $10 per month for a basic subscription with ads, with options to stream it ad-free or to save money through bundling. The Disney Bundle packages the service with Hulu and/or ESPN Plus, and there’s also a newer bundle pack that includes Max, Hulu and Disney Plus starting at $17 per month. Read our Disney Plus review.
Episode release schedule for ‘Daredevil: Born Again’
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‘It Will Not Be Punisher-Lite’ Says Jon Bernthal About ‘Daredevil’ Spin-Off
ByPaul Tassi
, Senior Contributor.
Punisher
The premiere of Daredevil: Born Again has been well-received by fans and (mostly) critics, and that’s even before seeing the return of Jon Bernthal’s Punisher, who will be a key part of this season.
Frank Castle will indeed return from his Netflix days to Born Again, and has been a significant part of the promotion for the series, his appearance far from a surprise. In the pilot, we already got a hint about his return with corrupt cops adopting his skull symbol in a way that he will no doubt not appreciate. This relates to a real-world practice that Jon Bernthal has already spoken out against:
“These people are misguided, lost, and afraid. They have nothing to do with what Frank stands for or is about,” he said. Frank, of course, is about murdering criminals, not shaking down people for cash or executing witnesses like these cops.
As for the future of The Punisher, after Daredevil, we already know where this is going. Bernthal is writing his own “special” for The Punisher, which will not air in theaters, but will be a sort of mini-movie event for Disney Plus. Bernthal has been talking about Frank and his future during his promotion of The Accountant 2, where he co-stars with Ben Affleck:
“I care very deeply about Frank, I’m really grateful that I’m getting the opportunity to tell the story that I think the fans deserve. We’re giving it our all and we’re trying to tell a Frank Castle story that we’re not going to turn our back on the audience — it’s not going to be easy, it’s not going to be light, and I think it’s the version that this character deserves and I’m just beyond honored and grateful that we get the opportunity.”
The Punisher
And on how it compares to the Netflix series:
“It’s going to be dark; Frank has no interest in breaking out the darkness. It’s not going to be easy. I don’t know if that’s the Netflix tone then that’s what it’s going to be…It will not be Punisher-lite, I promise you that.”
Some fans were skeptical when it was promised that Daredevil: Born Again would also be “dark” and violent when the character returned, given that had been promised in the past with series like Moon Knight and Echo which did not really deliver. But so far, Daredevil seems to be living up to its word, and I think Disney is less afraid of R/MA-rated MCU content these days, perhaps in part by Deadpool and Wolverine making over a billion dollars.
Frank’s return is a signal that other Netflix heroes may come back to the universe. It’s sort of an open secret that Jessica Jones will be here at some point, though whether that’s just a cameo or a reprisal of her own series, remains unclear. No word on Luke Cage or Iron Fist, but some fans are hoping for a Heroes for Hire series with the two of them.
I am a little surprised Bernthal isn’t doing his own full-on show, but he will be in a significant chunk of Born Again in addition to this special, and he’s frankly just very, very busy now, as his star has elevated in recent years between projects like The Bear, We Own This City, Ford V Ferrari and others. He’s even been cast in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Big moves for Frank Castle, and we’re just lucky we’ve got him back at all.
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