Discover how Marvel's First Family and Doctor Doom go from uneasy allies to bitter enemies in Marvel First Family & Doctor Doom Are Friends Until Doomsday.
Nobody expects that Doctor Doom, about to threaten every universe in the multiverse in Avengers: Doomsday, isn’t a stranger to the Fantastic Four. He’s family friend material. Reed Richards and Victor von Doom go back decades in the comics, and it’s confirmed after official comments from insiders reveal that it’s the emotional spine of the entire movie.
This isn’t the origin story where Doom shows up as a masked menace on day one. This is a slower, sadder kind of villain arc, and it’s exactly why Robert Downey Jr. signing on to play him made so much sense once you stopped picturing Iron Man and started picturing a man who lost everything and blames the people who once called him a friend.
Long before he was ruling Latveria and building doombots by the thousand, Victor von Doom shared a dorm with Reed Richards at State University. They were rivals in the lab, not enemies in the field.
The accident that scarred Doom’s face and pushed him toward sorcery and tyranny is tangled up with Reed’s own guilt — Reed warned Victor his calculations were flawed, Victor ignored him, and the explosion that followed set both of their lives on separate, colliding paths.
What makes their relationship genuinely unusual in Avengers: Doomsday is that it never fully curdled into simple hatred. Doctor Doom has, at various points, called a truce with the Fantastic Four to fight bigger cosmic threats.
He’s shown up for moments on with Marvel’s first family. Most strikingly, in the comics, Doom personally delivered Reed and Sue’s daughter, Valeria, when a pregnancy complication threatened both mother and child and he later became her godfather. That’s not a footnote. That’s a writer deliberately keeping the door open between a hero and his greatest enemy, generation after generation.
Why this matters for the movie: If the MCU is borrowing this dynamic, Doom isn’t being introduced as a stranger the Fantastic Four have to figure out. He’s someone Marvel’s first family already trusted. That’s a much heavier betrayal to write and a much heavier one to watch.
According to a widely circulated from industry leaker Daniel Richtman, the Fantastic Four’s Reed Richard and Doctor Doom are described as being on friendly terms heading into the film as people who have known each other for years rather than adversaries meeting for the first time.
The same rumor claims the fallout that turns them into enemies is essentially the plot of the movie itself, with Doctor Doom reportedly seen playing with Franklin Richards in a post-credits scene of Fantastic Four: First Steps. Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm saw them and tried to prepare to use her power to protect her son but the scene ended.
However, the scene made fans mind that Doom was an enemy, if he’s friendly then Sue may not see Doom as a threat and calm down.
“Doctor Doom is just playing with Franklin, he mean no harm to the kid” — Ritchman Says
Marvel Studios hasn’t laid out the Reed-Doom relationship on record. But it lines up too neatly with six decades of comics history to dismiss, and directors Joe and Anthony Russo have publicly described Doom as one of the most complex characters in Marvel’s library — someone they wanted to explore with “complexities and vulnerabilities” rather than write as a straightforward conqueror.
“He’s not simply a villain; he’s one of the most complex Marvel characters. He’s always three moves ahead.” — Joe Russo, co-director, on Doctor Doom
If there’s one thread connecting the comics history to the reported MCU plot, it’s Franklin Richards. In the comics, Franklin is regarded as one of the most powerful beings to ever exist — capable of warping reality, creating pocket universes, and reading minds before he can properly walk. The Fantastic Four: First Steps already introduced him as a baby who ages into a young child by the film’s end, and multiple reports suggest Doom’s interest in Franklin is central to why he moves against the family at all.
A godfather turning on the family he swore to protect, driven by what a child could become, that’s not comic book villainy for its own sake. That’s a tragedy with body count.
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| Title | Details |
| Title / Event | Avengers: Secret Wars (follow-up: Avengers: Secret Wars — Part II noted as Dec 17, 2027) |
| Release date | December 18, 2026 |
| Follow-up installment | Avengers: Secret Wars follows (sequel/next major MCU event) on December 17, 2027 |
| Main villain | Doctor Doom — played by Robert Downey Jr.; full costume unveiled at CinemaCon 2026 |
| Returning lead cast | Chris Evans (Steve Rogers), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Pedro Pascal (Reed Richards), Vanessa Kirby (Sue Richards) |
| Fantastic Four presence | Seven characters from First Steps confirmed to appear, including HERBIE (the robot) |
| Directors | Anthony Russo and Joe Russo (returning to MCU since Avengers: Endgame) |
| Setting / premise | Heroes from three separate universes — Earth-616, Earth-828 (Fantastic Four’s world), and Fox X-Men universe — converge to face Doctor Doom |
The trailer shown at CinemaCon and in teasers has already leaned into Doom’s overwhelming power — a scene where he stops Thor’s Stormbreaker with one hand has become the moment fans keep replaying.
But the same trailer reportedly closes on a much quieter, more devastating line from Doom: “One day you will forgive me.” That’s not the sentence of a conqueror talking to strangers. That’s the sentence of someone talking to people he actually cares whether they forgive.
The MCU has struggled with villain motivation before — plenty of Phase Four and Five antagonists existed mainly to be defeated. Doom being a person the Fantastic Four actually liked, trusted, and maybe even loved solves that problem before it starts. They also don’t have to start from scratch in making us feel sympathetic for Doom; they get that from sixty years of history between Reed and Victor, and they get to spend their running time dismantling it on-screen rather than explaining it in exposition.
It also raises the stakes for everyone standing next to the Fantastic Four when Doctor Doom turns. If he’s willing to burn a friendship this old to get what he wants, nobody in Avengers: Doomsday is safe because they’re powerful. They’re at risk because they’re close to him.
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Doctor Doom isn’t a fascinating Avengers: Doomsday antagonist simply because he’s the most powerful person present. He’s compelling because he’s introduced as someone Fantastic Four already know, trust, and consider part of their lives. That background makes every encounter not just a fight to save the multiverse, but the shattering of a friendship that once felt unshakable.
If Marvel follows the emotional roadmap it set forth in the comics, “Avengers: Doomsday” won’t just establish Doom as the MCU’s next major villain. It’ll show how pride, grief, and unthinkable choices can turn a trusted friend into the deadliest enemy Marvel heroes have ever encountered. And now, with the multiverse at stake and Reed Richards facing the friend he couldn’t save, the conflict is far more tragic than your standard-oh-hero-versus-villain story.
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Discover the best Superhero Books and superhero comics to read, featuring iconic heroes, thrilling stories, powerful villains, and must-read adventures for every fan.
Walk into a comic shop right now and you’ll notice something that hasn’t happened in over a decade: DC and Marvel are both mid-reinvention at the same time. DC blew up its own continuity with 2024’s Absolute Power event and rebuilt half its roster from the ground up in a new line called the Absolute Universe. Marvel did something similar on its side, resetting the Ultimate Universe and letting Jonathan Hickman rewrite Spider-Man’s entire life before issue one even hits shelves.
If you’ve been searching for superhero books that are worth your dollars and your minutes, this is one of the best jumping on points we’ve had in years and every single superhero comic on this list either began or ended in the past two years, so don’t expect to find anything ancient in the boxes here.
Every pick below is either a currently-running series with a strong first volume or a maxiseries that’s already finished. Prices reflect standard trade paperback pricing at time of writing; flag anything below as unconfirmed and double-check at checkout, since comics pricing shifts with printings.
Writer: Scott Snyder | Artist: Nick Dragotta | Publisher: DC Comics | Collects Absolute Batman #1–6 | Price: ~$17.99 paperback (standard Absolute-line price; confirm at your retailer) | Best for: readers who want the flagship title everyone’s talking about
This is the book that kicked off DC’s Absolute Universe in October 2024, and it’s still the line’s biggest seller. Bruce Wayne here isn’t a billionaire — he’s a civil engineer with no manor, no Alfred, and a much rougher relationship with Gotham’s underworld. Snyder and Dragotta play that blue-collar card strong and it makes the character truly feel like something you haven’t read before. However, it’s a build-up, not a payoff like the marketing suggests, and if you’re expecting classic Batman gadgetry, the first half a dozen issues are more about building the world than throwing punches.
Writer: Jason Aaron | Artist: Rafa Sandoval | Publisher: DC Comics | Collects Absolute Superman #1–6 | Price: $17.99 paperback | Best for: readers who want Superman with real stakes and no safety net
Aaron strips away everything comfortable about Clark Kent — no Fortress of Solitude, no found family waiting at home — and drops him into conflict with a shady multinational corporation almost immediately. It’s a more streamlined and aggressive version of the character but it still keeps his decency intact. There is a limit to this as whiplash is felt: certain readers feel the corporate-conspiratorial plot is a step down from ambition compared to Snyder’s Batman – even if Sandoval’s art is ever-consistent.
Writer: Kelly Thompson | Artist: Hayden Sherman | Publisher: DC Comics | Collects Absolute Wonder Woman #1–7 | Price: $17.99 paperback, published August 2025 | Best for: readers who want horror and dark fantasy in their superhero comics
Thompson takes Diana’s known Themysciran childhood and turns it on its head by raising her in the underground with Circe rather than among the Amazons. The result is less a classic superhero origin story and more one of supernatural terror. Sherman’s art is just as eye-catching, with sharp linework and disquieting colors that lend the entire book a unique visual voice.
The only negative is that this is not the Wonder Woman that most casual fans know. For a more standard Themyscira-centric origin story, Wonder Woman: Year One is the superior place to begin.
Writer: Al Ewing · Artist: Jahnoy Lindsay | Publisher: DC Comics | Collects Absolute Green Lantern #1–6 | Price: $17.99 paperback, published December 2025 | Best for: readers who want cosmic sci-fi over street-level stakes
Ewing shakes up Green Lantern mythology with an alien monolith that arrives in a remote Nevada town and starts judging its citizens. Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, John Stewart, and Jo Mullein are all dragged into the fray, but they come out of the gate as ordinary people and not Corps members.
It’s an ambitious, high-concept set up, perfect for Ewing’s gift for weird, cosmic storytelling. The downside is that having four future Lanterns to balance means the first volume is a lot of world building before any one character really takes the stage.
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Writer: Deniz Camp | Artist: Javier Rodríguez | Publisher: DC Comics | Collects Absolute Martian Manhunter #1–6 | Price: $17.99 paperback, published November 2025 | Best for: readers who want something genuinely strange
This is the trippiest book on the list. FBI agent John Jones gets his mind overwritten by an alien consciousness that perceives reality in ways the human brain can barely process, and Camp and Rodríguez lean fully into that disorientation rather than softening it for accessibility. It’s one of the more purely inventive superhero comics being published right now. The limitation is exactly what makes it interesting — the fractured, psychedelic structure asks more of a first-time reader than any other book on this list.
Writer: Ram V | Artist: Evan Cagle | Publisher: DC Comics | Collects The New Gods #1–12 (complete maxiseries) | Price: $17.99 paperback per volume (unconfirmed — verify at checkout) | Best for: readers who want a complete story, not an ongoing commitment
It is the one selection on this list you can consume all at once with no cliffhangers, as the entire 12-issue story arc was published from February 2025 to January 2026 and ended as a complete and very satisfying epic. Ram V reinvents Jack Kirby’s Fourth World mythos as Scott Free and Big Barda make their way through the jungle of new parents while an astral prophecy is poised to rip New Genesis and Apokolips asunder.
It’s honestly one of the best-reviewed superhero books in the past year. The catch: Ram V takes for granted, if not outright expects, that readers already know who the New Gods are, so it isn’t the softest introduction to characters like Darkseid, Orion, and Mister Miracle.
Writer: Pornsak Pichetshote | Artist: Rafael Albuquerque | Publisher: DC Comics | Single issue only — no trade collection yet | Price: standard single-issue price, likely $4.99–$5.99 (unconfirmed) | Best for: readers who want to get in on day one of a new series
This is the freshest book on the list — issue #1 hit shelves in May 2026 and sold well enough to warrant a second printing within weeks. Oliver Queen is murdered before the story even starts, and the mystery of who’s using his old Green Arrow gimmick to hunt down corrupt billionaires is told largely through Dinah Lance’s eyes rather than Oliver’s. It’s a sharper, more mystery-driven angle than past Green Arrow runs. The obvious limitation: there’s no collected edition yet, so you’re buying single issues or waiting, and it’s still unclear whether this becomes an ongoing series or stays a miniseries.
Writer: Jonathan Hickman | Artist: Marco Checchetto | Publisher: Marvel Comics | Collects Ultimate Spider-Man (2024) #1–6 | Price: $17.99–$19.99 depending on retailer | Best for: readers who want Marvel’s version of a no-baggage relaunch
Hickman brings Spider-Man to a startlingly new place: Peter Parker wasn’t bitten by a radioactive spider. Rather, he was raised, married MJ, had children, and he lived a normal life – until Iron Man comes calling and gives him the powers he never had as a kid.
The series was named Best Marvel Comic of 2024 by The Hollywood Reporter, and the 24-issue run is ending in February 2026, allowing new readers to experience the whole story without having to pause for the next issue. This is a much more down-to-earth, family-focused Spider-Man than the one most fans think of as the wall-crawler. This is not the quintessential teenage Peter Parker story, if that’s what you want.
Writer: Ryan North | Artist: not fully confirmed at time of writing — check current solicitation | Publisher: Marvel Comics | Collects Fantastic Four (2025) #1–5 plus the Free Comic Book Day 2025 Fantastic Four story | Price: unconfirmed, expect the standard $15.99–$17.99 Marvel trade range | Best for: readers who want smart, structurally clever superhero comics
Ryan North’s Fantastic Four run has developed into one of Marvel’s most consistently acclaimed ongoing books, and this 2025 volume is the latest jumping-on point after the team’s Doctor Doom arc. North’s scripts lean on clever high-concept plotting — time loops, killer Doombots, alternate worlds without losing the family dynamic that makes the FF work. But north’s take is dialogue-heavy and idea-dense, which some readers love and others find slows the pacing compared to a more action-first book like Absolute Batman.
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Writer: Deniz Camp, with Jonathan Hickman | Artist: Juan Frigeri | Publisher: Marvel Comics | Collects Ultimates (2024) #1–6 and Ultimate Universe (2023) #1 | Price: unconfirmed, expect standard $17.99 Marvel trade pricing | Best for: readers who want Marvel’s Avengers-level team book without 60 years of continuity
Camp writes this as the flagship team book of Marvel’s rebuilt Ultimate Universe, with a search for answers eventually pulling in a reimagined She-Hulk. It’s been one of the better-reviewed launches in the Ultimate line, praised for treating its ensemble cast with real weight instead of just cameos.
Because it’s tied so closely into the wider Ultimate Universe relaunch, it reads best after — or at least alongside — Ultimate Spider-Man, rather than as a fully standalone entry point.
Don’t route all your buying through one retailer. Trade paperbacks on this list should be available through Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Books-A-Million, and Target, and if they’re not on your local comic shop’s shelves, they can most likely special-order them for you.
With respect to individual issues, primarily Absolute Green Arrow#1, which has no collected edition as of yet — your local shop or a site such as the regional comic shop locator will in general provide you with a copy sooner than you’d get it from a restock of a big box retailer. Digital readers can find nearly everything here through Marvel Unlimited or DC’s digital storefront the same day it hits print.
If you’ve never read a superhero comic and want the safest, most talked-about entry point, start with Absolute Batman Vol. 1: The Zoo — it’s the best-selling book on this list for a reason. If you want a complete story with no waiting, go with The New Gods or Ultimate Spider-Man by Jonathan Hickman, since both are already finished.
If budget matters and you only want to try one book before committing further, skip the newest single issue (Absolute Green Arrow) until a trade collection exists, and pick up one of the $17.99 Absolute Universe volumes instead — they’re consistently the best per-dollar entry point on this list. Whichever you choose, all ten of these are proof that 2026 is a genuinely good year to start reading superhero comics again.
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Superhero comics are going through a surprisingly great moment for new readers this very moment. DC’s Absolute Universe and Marvel’s reconstructed Ultimate Universe both provide new starting points that don’t demand decades of continuity, and complete stories like The New Gods and Ultimate Spider-Man let you read from cover to cover without waiting for the next issue.
If you want the safest first pick, Absolute Batman Vol. 1: The Zoo is the obvious choice, while Ultimate Spider-Man is best for fans of a more down-to-earth, family-themed version of Peter Parker. For something weirder and more sinister or cosmic, there’s Absolute Wonder Woman, Absolute Martian Manhunter, and Absolute Green Lantern, all very different rides. Since all ten books provide fairly new entry points, 2026 is a great year to jump into superhero comics.
Delve into the way Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 blurs the lines of fiction & reality with its politics, Matt Murdock’s transformation, and Fisk’s ascension.
There is a point in the narrative when the fiction becomes part of the real world and even the makers of the story are left breathless. And that’s exactly where Daredevil: Born Again is set to be as it gears up to debut for its highly anticipated second season on Disney+. What was once a meticulously planned storyline about Wilson Fisk’s rise to power in politics has evolved into something much more terrifying — a show that now seems to be chronicling current events, not just predicting them.
Recently, Dario Scardapane, the showrunner, had the chance to talk about scenes that were written and shot over a year ago and then watch near-identical scenes play out on the evening news. The Anti-Vigilante Task Force that Mayor Fisk unleashes in season 2 — all-black agents, nondescript vans, detention facilities looks and feels like the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids that have dominated headlines as of late. The resemblance is not by chance, and not by accident. Instead it is a creative team who went to the history books for inspiration and found , much to their mutual frustration, that history was about to do just that.
“We were attempting to construct a narrative of a rise to power and a resistance, and it was less about the headlines and more about looking back in history, Now did we know that the imagery we captured would be on the news in two months? No. It’s humbling. It’s chilling. You derive no pleasure from that.” Scardapane said in a recent interview with USA Today.
That sense, both unsettling and humbling and strange unfulfillment creatively, are the perfect encapsulation of what it feels like to put out politically charged art in 2018. We live in an era when the distinction between fiction and reality seems more blurred than ever. It hasn’t seemed like the cast and crew of Born Again that they’ve been forecasting the future—more that they’ve been coming to terms, a little uncomfortably, with the fact that the modes of authoritarian control aren’t all that different, even across centuries.
As Marvel Television started working on the second season of Daredevil: Born Again, showrunners were intent on wrapping up the Mayor Fisk arc that kicked off in season one and carried over from the Echo series. Fisk’s martial law and he-war on vigilantes gave way to a classic resistance gestalt—albeit one with foundations that could be traced all the way back to the dawn of superhero genre storytelling. What they didn’t expect was how the aesthetic language of that resistance would connect with today’s audiences.
Executive producer Sana Amanat has been open about the show’s political nature, describing the story as a study on how authoritarian leaders use institutional power to target marginalized communities. In a chat with Entertainment Weekly, Amanat and Scardapane admitted they knew people were going to “make comparisons” between the Anti-Vigilante Task Force and today’s immigration enforcement tactics. The black uniforms, the paramilitary-style raids, the rounding up of people with no due process — it all builds a visual lexicon that reads like it was plucked from recent news, even though it predates them by several months.
Scardapane has been especially vocal on the historical roots of the parallels. He doesn’t pretend to know what the future holds, only what the past has shown before, citing historical personages such as Nero, Pinochet and Franco as leaders who “follow a script” when they gain power. The series also includes nods to real history such as the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus tying its fictional disputes to real-world, documented instances of authoritarianism. “You tend to get ‘History repeating itself,” noted the creative team, implying what feels topical is actually timeless — the same mechanisms of control and resistance playing out in different times and places.
That’s a tightrope to balance for Marvel. The studio, on the other hand, has embraced the political implications of the source material, recognizing that superhero stories have always functioned as stand-ins for real-world wars. The X-Men were born out of the civil rights movement, Captain America was beating up Nazis in World War II, and the Black Panther books tackled colonialism and its fall-out. Daredevil: Born Again is part of that tradition, in depicting how the engines of power can be taken over by those who would rule, not serve.
Conversely, there’s the danger of simplification of political complexities into a superhero pageantry. The ICE parallels, while powerful visually and emotionally, also risk compressing the particular lived experiences of immigrant communities into a generic “resistance” narrative. The show’s creative team appears to have a sense of this push and pull, with Scardapane stating that their object was never to make a statement on any particular current-day policies, but rather to look at the “timeless power dynamics — corruption, and the moral resistance.”
The political climate of Season 2 isn’t just for show — it serves as a substantial catalyst for Matt Murdock’s journey. As of “Street” at the close of Season 1, Matt was still struggling to balance his two identities, still attempting to play by the rules even as the system was being used as a weapon against him. But for Season 2, he is in a very, very different place.
Matt is officially a “missing person” after his apartment is bombed, and he can no longer go about as an ordinary lawyer. The very identity he’d been desperately clinging to for much of the first season — Matt Murdock, blind attorney and crusader for justice — has been taken from him by circumstance. Now, he’s Daredevil full-time, a fugitive living in the shadows, hunted not only by Fisk’s Anti-Vigilante Task Force but by his friends.
Charlie Cox, who has played Matt Murdock for more than ten years across the Netflix and now Disney+ version of the character, summed up this evolution with an oddly mundane comparison. “Does that come to mind for you when you were losing your baby teeth and there was one tooth that was wobbly for what felt like a decade and it just wouldn’t go?” Cox asked in a recent interview. “It was just a constant irritation and a pain in your mouth, and it wouldn’t go. That’s how Matt feels about Wilson Fisk. He’s inhabited this man, and he can’t get away from this person.”
This aching body is a reflection of what Matt has actually become is the mind-shattering psychological reality of his new reality. Previously he had been able to go back to his law practice, to his friendships with Foggy Nelson and Karen Page, to the relative normalcy of Hell’s Kitchen living, but now there’s just the mission. The suit is more than just a costume, it is a second skin, which both characters wear in almost every scene – a practical challenge for Cox that results in an emotional weight for the role.
One especially moving scene in season 2 captures this erosion of self. When Karen Page asks Matt if he ever misses “being Matt Murdock,” the query lands with the emotional power of the iconic final scene in The Graduate—that moment of lucidity following the adrenaline rush, when the leading man realizes that winning and losing are indistinct. “It’s a fun thing to be able to be the full Daredevil and almost forget who Matt Murdock is and what he is and how he operates,” Cox said, balancing both the freedom and tragedy of that evolution.
This is the same arc in Fisk’s own story that we are seeing play out in this character evolution. Where Matt has been forced to lean into his darker identity, Fisk is now letting his real self as the Kingpin peel back the layers of Mayor Wilson Fisk. Vincent D’Onofrio who portrays a menacing yet pitiable Fisk has called the dynamic between the two characters symbiotically obsessive for “a piece of corn stuck in his teeth” which Fisk nervously picks at.
Mentions to both heroes and villains are a constant in the show runner aana Amanat, who describes them as having “spent a lot of the first season in denial of who they were” before Season 2 where they are “finally wearing their suits” – both literally and figuratively. This symmetry throws into relief how the Daredevil/Kingpin battle has left straight hero/villain war behind: it is now a mirror-match, two men who have embraced their natures, both for good and evil.
Daredevil: Born Again would be as empty as if not for Season 1: Foggy Nelson dies and presses this-jawbiting madness home. From the time the original Netflix show debuted in 2015, Elden Henson’s character has been Matt’s best friend, law partner, and his moral compass. His death in the first few minutes of the Disney + reboot makes clear right away that this is going to be a very different Daredevil tale — one that’s personal, permanent, and catastrophic.
Season 2 picks up after that loss for Matt, who is now dealing with grief and PTSD that impact not only how he feels but also the tactical choices he makes on the battlefield, how he works with his team, and even how he suits up as Daredevil. “He will never be the same again,” Cox said emphatically. “There will be not a day in his life when he doesn’t think about him and think about what he did.” From an actor’s point of view it’s kind of a dream, because it just gives it so much texture.”
The reappearance of Foggy Nelson in Season 2 teased in trailers and confirmed by Henson’s inclusion in marketing materials opens up all sorts of questions about how the show will address this mourning. Flashbacks? Dream sequences? Or something more metaphysical? Against all odds what’s matters the most is Foggy is a presence that reminds Matt with other methods to what he’s lost and what he’s still fighting for.
That emotional core is what grounds the political allegory of Season 2 in personal stakes. The crusade against Fisk is not an abstraction—it is about keeping people from losing their lives in the way that has defined Matt’s life. The Anti-Vigilante Task Force is not only a metaphor for institutional overreach, but also a real threat to the community Foggy risked everything to save.
While the Season 2 political thriller has been dominating headlines, the season also serves as a send-off of Marvel Television’s Netflix legacy as Krysten Ritter returns as Jessica Jones. The hard-drinking, super-powered PI, who had three seasons on her own show, teams up with Matt in his fight against Fisk, bringing them together in a reunion fans have been longing for since the original Defenders miniseries.
Scardapane has been effusive about Ritter rejoining the fold, describing it as “top of the checklist” for the season. “I love the work that Melissa [Rosenberg] did in Jessica Jones,” he told GamesRadar+. “It’s one of the best genre television shows you’ll ever see. Krysten has created an amazing character,”I think she’s done an amazing job.”
This comeback is a multipurpose one. It’s for those viewers who have been along for the ride through the Netflix Marvel universe, a confirmation of that continuity and a reward for their investment in these characters. In terms of the Born Again story, Jessica is a different kind of hero – a less burdened by catholic guilt and legal ethics, more pragmatic and self-preserving. Her interactions with Matt, who has wrestled with the ethics of vigilantism, will certainly give both of them some tension and unexpected camaraderie.
Amanat emphasized that Jessica’s return was “a desire we’ve had right from the beginning,” suggesting that the creative team sees the Netflix characters not as orphaned IP, but rather as integral elements of the Marvel landscape. “It’s exciting to see where she is now many years later,” Amanat said, teasing how time and experience have altered the character since we last saw her.
Maybe the biggest among the recent Scardapane interviews is what it revealed not about S2, but what lies beyond it. The Mayor Fisk arc, which has been the spine of Born Again and its related series, will reach its “inevitable conclusion” at the end of the second season. This political phase of Daredevil’s life is drawing to a close, and the series has planted its feet to shift course for Season 3.
“The playbook is pretty well established,” Scardapane told SFX Magazine. “So when we were writing this stuff we’re like, ‘This is what he does.’ The anti-vigilante taskforce is the comic book. And we built them and costumed them from the comics.”
Yet, while the political thriller aspects have been fun to delve into, Scardapane has said she’d like to bring the character back to his roots. “Going into politics, New York politics, Game of Thrones back-stabbing, allying, and betraying behind the scenes. That’s a good bit of fun, but when it starts to become almost too topical, it feels like it’s moving away from the big, mythological genre stuff,” he observed. “So as we wind down the Mayor Fisk run in season 2, as that story arc comes to its inevitable end, what we’re doing going forward has definitely more of a [Frank] Miller-era comics feeling to it. So yeah, I had a good time playing in the world of politics, but I prefer something a little more street level, personally.”
That is a very brazen artistic declaration. Frank Miller’s 1980s Daredevil is the definitive, dangedest, noirest, morally questionable version of the character we’ve seen more enmeshed in the world of Hell’s Kitchen organized crime than the political machinations at City Hall. Miller introduced Elektra, turned the Kingpin into a Daredevil rather than a Spider-Man villain, and established the visual and thematic lexicon that the Netflix series and now Born Again have borrowed from.
A return to Miller-era storytelling provides a number of intriguing options for season 3. The addition of Bullseye – Wilson Bethel’s Benjamin Poindexter made an appearance in the original Netflix series and is expected to return – would go hand in hand with this aesthetic. I would say that Elektra showing up is just as fitting and one could even see Elodie Yung return. And for what it’s worth, Scardapane hasn’t ruled anything out, and given the Miller era’s penchant for bold narrative gambits, that means there’s at least a chance that Foggy Nelson’s demise might not have been as final as it seemed.
At its core, the change in tone is an admission that Daredevil is at his best when telling a street-level crime story, as opposed to a political thriller. The character’s powers — enhanced senses, martial arts expertise, legal understanding — are really best suited for smaller-scale skirmishes, rather than big political movements. The Netflix series got that, earning its reputation on grounded storytelling about crime, morality and the boundaries of what’s legal. Born Again has opened things up to city-wide politics, but Season 3 is set to bring the focus back down to the neighborhoods and the criminal organizations and personal vendettas that have always been the truest home for Daredevil.
The creative choices confronting Daredevil: Born Again are symptomatic of wider pressures within super hero storytelling in the 2020s. This is not to say these characters have not always been political—Superman took on corrupt landlords in his first ever stories, Captain America whose first cover appearance is punching Hitler, the X-Men function, since their very inception, as allegories for marginalized groups. To suggest that superhero narratives play out in a political void is to deny both their past, and their power.
But there is storytelling wise a difference between timeless allegory and then and there commentary. When you tie superhero stories too closely to narrow, specific current events, they have a tendency to age poorly, alienate some of their audiences, and oversimplify complex political matters into good guy/bad guy dynamics. The ICE analogues in Born Again Season 2 straddle that line, quite literally by invoking historical patterns of authoritarian conduct while inevitably engaging with the present.
Scardapane’s declared desire for “something a little more street level” reflects an understanding that Daredevil is at its best when the politics are implied rather than shouted when the narrative fixates on the human toll of corruption and violence over the nuts and bolts of political power. The Miller-era comics on which Season 3 will be based were undoubtedly political, but their politics was rooted in character and atmosphere rather than explicit statements on the politics of the day.
That doesn’t say Born Again will eschew its discussions of real-world concerns. The finest crime tales from the comics, movies or television always reveal something about the culture that spawned them. But, in retaking the streets of Hell’s Kitchen as its setting, the show can address those concerns in terms of character and community, rather than the spectacle of political confrontation.
As Daredavil: Born Again Season 2 is coming out on 24 March, 2026, this series stands at a mid-point. The political thriller aspects that have defined this chapter of the character are coming to an end, making way for a return to the noir-tinged street-level stories that have always been Daredevil’s best meat and potatoes. The ICE analogs, which have become the focus of so much pre-release discussion, will give way to new antagonists maybe including Bullseye, Elektra, and the criminal underworld that has long been the true battlefield for Matt Murdock’s soul.
What stays the same, though, is the core connection between Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk, a feud that has now defined a decade of television narrative. Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio have matured in these roles, discovering new layers in a rivalry that could well have stale in lesser hands. The two actors still are able to mine new angles out of this dynamic — they compare it to wobbly teeth and corn kernels indicates there’s still life left in their antagonism even as the political storyline winds down.
To the viewer, the promise of a Frank Miller-run Season 3 feels like the best possible compromise: political nuance that has ultimately defined Born Again-era Marvel and street-level grit that made the original Netflix run a must-watch. If Scardapane and his team can pull off this transition, they’ll have proven that Daredevil is still one of Marvel’s most flexible and enduring characters able to talk to the political moment and be grounded in the timeless themes of justice, corruption, and what it costs to fight for what’s right.
That’s what superhero stories do best, in the end. They don’t so much forecast the future or provide direct comment on the present as remind us of the patterns that shape human experience — the ascent of authoritarianism, the resistance of the downtrodden, the personal toll of moral engagement. Daredevil: Born Again has serendipitously become a topical series, but its real power is in rising above those concerns to locate in its very particular Hell’s Kitchen disputes something universal about the battle between power and justice.
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As the series leaves behind the Mayor Fisk era and returns to the streets, it has the heft of that political experiment — the acknowledgment that even when we take our cues from history, we’re confronted with the present. The Anti-Vigilante Task Force is a comic book invention, but the anxieties it embodies are real. And Daredevil’s superhuman will improbable as it is speaks to something just as real: the tenacious, unyielding belief that one man can take on the system, that the devil of Hell’s Kitchen can still make a dent in a world that more and more seems to be throwing up its hands.
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