If you watched the premiere of Daredevil: Born Again season two and thought, “Wait, I thought I put on Disney+, not CNN,” that was not by design. The show does, in fact, follow a well-funded, well-armed, super evil group called the Anti-Vigilante Task Force whose job is to hunt down and imprison people their boss, Mayor Fisk, deems to be problems. But any parallels to a real-life group doing that in America are purely coincidental, at least according to Marvel.
Speaking to Variety at the premiere of the show earlier this week, head of Marvel Television, Brad Winderbaum, addressed the way the show certainly feels more pertinent than ever. “Any kind of reflection on reality is coincidental,” Winderbaum said. “But Stan Lee said Marvel reflects the world outside our window. Sometimes things just take on a life of their own.”
Television certainly has a life of its own, and that is one thing that backs up Winderbaum’s statement. Daredevil: Born Again season two was written “nearly two years ago,” according to the trade. So while then-former President Donald Trump was certainly running to become president again around that time, he had not yet won, let alone unleashed the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (aka ICE) on cities across the country. It’s just something that people in power have done across history. So, yes, Marvel is reflecting the world.
And yet, it’s hard to read that statement and not think of a recent statement by the Andor showrunner, Tony Gilroy. Gilroy also wrote a show that reflected the world around him and, months later, revealed that Disney told him not to use the word “fascism.” It didn’t want to ruffle more feathers than it already would and hoped to let the work speak for itself.
Daredevil: Born Again does just that and will continue to throughout the season. And while, by definition, the show’s real-world parallels may not have been written as a specific, targeted commentary on ICE and President Trump, it would be pretty heroic to lean into the “coincidence” a little bit more. It’s probably what Daredevil would want.
The premiere of Daredevil: Born Again season two is now on Disney+. New episodes are dropping weekly.
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