The new comic-accurate designs for Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk in Daredevil: Born Again Season 3 arrived courtesy of Marvel Studios, and both leading men are sporting heavy beards. Charlie Cox's hero closed out Season 2 of the Disney+ series by exposing his secret identity in open court, walking straight into a prison cell as Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin was forced out of New York. With Matt now locked up alongside the very enemies he put away, Marvel is setting up a new visual identity for both characters that pulls directly from the page.
Marvel Studios shared a promo video for the Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 finale, and the footage doubles as the studio's debut of how Matt and Fisk will look in Season 3. Both characters appear with thick beards, Matt's brown and full and Fisk's white and grizzled, a breakaway from the looks fans have known across more than a decade of live-action stories.
The promo confirms what set photos only hinted at, and it ties directly into the prison-set comic arc the third season is building toward. Those photos showed D'Onofrio's character rocking a winter coat, beanie, and, of course, the big white beard we see in Marvel Studios' promo footage.
Charlie Cox addressed the bearded Daredevil look in a finale interview with TheWrap. Speaking about where the show goes after Matt's courtroom gamble pays off and Fisk is ousted from City Hall, Cox said Matt would be sporting a beard for the new season, calling it a "very fun and different look."
He added that Season 3 pays homage, at least early on, to an excellent Daredevil run in the comics, and that he was excited when he learned where the writers were taking the story.
The Comic Roots of Matt Murdock & Wilson Fisk's New Designs
The bearded Daredevil look is pulled straight from two of the character's most acclaimed prison stories. The first is The Devil in Cell Block D, the opening arc of Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark's run, running through Daredevil Vol. 2, issues 82-87. In that story, Matt Murdock is locked up in Ryker's Island after his identity is leaked, surrounded by inmates he put there, and forced into uneasy alliances with Wilson Fisk and Frank Castle just to survive.
The second touchstone is Chip Zdarsky and Marco Checchetto's run from 2022 onward, which also leans into a longer, fuller beard for Matt during his return to Hell's Kitchen.
Zdarsky's run sent Matt to prison again in the Doing Time and Lockdown arcs after Daredevil was charged with manslaughter, and the bearded design Matt wears in those issues is a closer match to what Marvel Studios unveiled.
Born Again showrunner Dario Scardapane has signaled that he plans to combine elements from both runs, making the visual choice a smart shorthand for fans who know the source material.
How New Comic-Accurate Looks Will Make Daredevil Season 3 More Exciting
The new bearded designs put Daredevil: Born Again in territory that the live-action version of the characters have never operated in. From the Netflix run to the first two seasons on Disney+, the show has mostly shown Matt with a clean shave or light stubble in his lawyer suit.
It also featured a clean-shaven Fisk in his white suit. Both looks depicted a sense of control. Matt was the disciplined attorney moonlighting as a vigilante. Fisk was the empire-builder whose posh appearance was a big part of his character. Marvel just stripped both of that, and the change is a big indication that Season 3 will not be a continuation of what came before.
Matt's design is the more dramatic change in storytelling terms. The character has been defined by his double life since 2015, and this double life is now over. Everyone in New York knows he is Daredevil, his law career is finished, and he is sitting in a prison cell.
The full beard tells viewers that the Matt Murdock they grew up with is gone. There is no courtroom to return to in the morning, no Foggy to bounce ideas off, no clean separation between the man and the mask. What Cox plays in Season 3 has to be a different Matt, harder, more isolated, more dangerous in close quarters, and the design choice sells that well.
Fisk's redesign is also a big deal. D'Onofrio has played this character for eleven years and is rarely seen without the suit, the tie, and the upper-class aura he exudes. The white beard, the winter coat, and the loss of the mayoral office take all of that away.
What is left is a man who has lost his wife, city, and job, in that order, and is living somewhere far from any of it. This is a version of Fisk that fans have not seen in the MCU. It opens the door for D'Onofrio to play something rawer than the calculating crime lord he has refined since 2015, giving the character somewhere genuinely new to go. These elements, including the assembling of the Defenders-era characters, will make Season 3 unique and exciting.
Geraldo Amartey is a writer at The Direct. He joined the team in 2025, bringing with him four years of experience covering entertainment news, pop culture, and fan-favorite franchises for sites like YEN, Briefly and Tuko.
