According to Charlie Cox, there was one Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 he disliked working on. Cox returned to the Marvel world earlier this year, returning to his role as Matt Murdock/Daredevil in the R-rated Marvel Studios streaming series alongside fellow co-stars Jon Bernthal and Vincent D'Onofrio. However, his road to get there was not easy, as the series underwent significant creative changes on its way to release.
Daredevil star Charlie Cox revealed that he did not like Daredevil: Born Again Episode 5 when he was working on it. Episode 5 (titled "With Interest") was one of the few to go untouched in Born Again's creative revamp that changed the series from a wholly new venture to something more connected to Netflix's Daredevil series.
"I wasn't into it. I didn't like it," Cox admitted to The Playlist in a recent interview, adding that, "It was [his] least favorite of the episodes:"
"I dunno if this is of interest, but I will say this amongst all of this, there was one episode we didn’t change at all. It’s the episode in the bank ['With Interest'], and that was part of the original [shoot]. We shot that before the strike. That was part of the original, and just for my money, I wasn’t into it. I didn’t like it. It was my least favorite of the episodes, and I kind of pushed back against it as much as I felt was possible."
He said he did not "believe in a bank heist in 2025," a narrative device that the entire episode was based around. "I really pushed back on the episode, and yet I hear from so many people that they love that episode," he posited, showing that he may have been wrong for being so against it being included:
"I said, 'I don’t believe in a bank heist in 2025. That feels like a 1970s game. Too much technology these days for that to work.' And also, I didn’t think the actual device used for the theft was sophisticated enough. I really pushed back on the episode, and yet I hear from so many people that they love that episode."
"It just goes to show you just don’t know," the Daredevil actor remarked:
"So, it just goes to show you just don’t know. It’s so subjective. Everyone’s taste is different. And I’ve heard that that episode is one of the highest-rated. Internally, when they do their ratings, it’s one of the highest-rated Disney shows that they’ve had."
Elsewhere in the interview, Cox commented on the creative retooling the series underwent during production. He admitted that he thinks the move was the right decision and that bringing in showrunner Dario Scardapane was a good idea:
"Not to say anything about our previous runners who were tremendous writers and didn’t, but they had been hired to do a very specific job, and it was then decided that that direction was not the right direction. So, it made sense therefore to kind of hire someone who was more closely related to the Marvel Universe, particularly in the Marvel Netflix days where the serialized element of it was familiar to them."
This is a common sentiment among those who worked on the Daredevil reboot, with several people involved in Born Again sharing that they believe leaning into the show's Netflix lineage was a good idea.
Daredevil: Born Again picked up the story from Netflix's Daredevil series, following the continued exploits of blind lawyer Matt Murdock and his superhero alter-ego Daredevil. However, this time around, Matt had to deal with personal tragedy on a level never seen in the series before, as Elden Henson's Foggy Nelson was killed off in Episode 1, setting up yet another conflict between Matt and the villainous Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio).
Originally, Born Again was pitched as a more procedural approach to the super-powered lawyer, operating more like a Marvel-tinged Law & Order rather than continuing any existing narrative. However, after production was put on pause during the 2023 actors' and writers' strikes, the show was retooled to embrace the character's history on Netflix.
Will Daredevil: Born Again Revist the Episode 5 Formula?
These comments from Charlie Cox prove that even though an actor may be hesitant about a particular note or action by the production, they should trust the process and see it out.
While Episode 5 was leftover from the previous iteration of Daredevil: Born Again, it still stood out in Season 1 as one of the most celebrated episodes. Sure, it felt slightly different from the rest of the season, briefly halting Season 1's story; it also offered an exciting one-off tale that felt like an amazing single issue of a Daredevil comic book.
Going into Season 2, though, it seems highly unlikely that the Episode 5 formula will be revisited in any meaningful way. This one slipped through the cracks in Season 1 because it existed before Daredevil: Born Again's creative revamp.
Now, with the series focusing exclusively on serialized storytelling, following Matt Murdock as he navigates a New York City being ruled by Mayor Wilson Fisk and his Anti-Vigilante Task Force, little room is left for these smaller one-off stories.
Of course, the show's second season will feature one-time narrative set pieces through its ever-evolving story, but a bottle episode like what was brought to the screen in Season 1, Episode 5, seems highly unlikely.
