Vincent D’Onofrio Gives Fans Some Eerie Foreshadowing About The Kingpin’s Journey in Daredevil: Born Again

Daredevil: Born Again has fans on the edge of their seats as its fan-favourite protagonist makes the jump from the Netflix-era Marvel franchise to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in bigger and better fashion than ever before. Unfortunately for Matt Murdock, recent comments from a major player on the show suggest that he might not be the only one.

Daredevil: Born Again has undergone a massive overhaul since it was first announced as a revival of Netflix’s Daredevil for the MCU canon, including forcing Marvel Studios to completely change the way it makes its Disney+ shows. In all that flux, the only constants have been leading man Charlie Cox, reprising his iconic role as the titular lead, and star Vincent D’Onofrio set to return to his role as Matt Murdock’s primary antagonist. The show has since revealed a slew of promised returns, debuts, surprises and high-stakes storylines, all wrapped up in a package that cast and crew have touted as even more violent and gritty than the original. Despite delays brought on by the tragic LA fires, the official trailer for Daredevil: Born Again was finally released and it did not disappoint, getting fans all the more intrigued and excited to experience the show for themselves.

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While the trailer certainly reassured fans that the claims of the show’s physicality were no joke, another bit of promotion for the series seems to hint at an even more interesting development for one important character. Speaking to SFX in a recent issue that featured a closeup of Cox suited up for Daredevil: Born Again, unofficial co-lead and endearing Netflix-era fan favourite D’Onofrio dropped a perplexing hint about his character, the powerful Kingpin Wilson Fisk, that seems to suggest the character will become even more of a physical threat over the course of Daredevil: Born Again in addition to his newfound political clout. “We did other little things [in Hawkeye and Echo] to sell the size of him, but we’re going further,” D’Onofrio promised during the interview. “The size he ends up at the end of the first season, he’ll stay that way, but we’re doing some things in this new season we’re about to shoot that requires his size to be more specific and more detailed…”

“This first season is setting the table, and like any well-written series, we hope that the audience will understand,” D’Onofrio explains, going further as to not sell the show’s first season short. “Not that this season is not jam-packed with awesome things, because it is, but we’re working towards something else – something that people don’t know about, that we’re not even completely clear on.” This proposed physical change also mirrors the character’s growing influence and grasp on the city via political means a la the comic book story arc seen in Devil’s Reign, which D’Onofrio also addressed in the interview. “He is becoming increasingly dangerous, and I think he is flexing his darkness and his power, and he’s trying to basically gaslight a city, and then eventually a country, and then eventually a world. That’s the way he thinks, and there’s no stopping him.”

The Kingpin’s physique is easily his most distinguishing attribute both in the comics and in adaptations, and it’s a facet of the character that D’Onofrio has approached in different ways both within and outside the MCU. It’s still unclear what the actor’s comments mean in terms of how the Kingpin will change over the course of the show’s upcoming first season. While fans have seen D’Onofrio in his role as the Kingpin extensively and have even gotten to see him in the role within the MCU in Hawkeye and Echo on Disney+, the upcoming series will still offer a fresh take on the character altogether. As D’Onofrion puts it, “They were kind of different iterations of the Fisk from the original show. My job is to service the story. Hawkeye was one style of show, very far away from the Netflix series, and the way Fisk was written itself – which was really good – was a completely different world. When I did Echo, they leaned into the grittiness, but when it came to Fisk, it still was not quite the original thing. We’ve had the chance now to do it the way we wanted to do it.”

When all is said and done, fans are assuredly in for a treat when the show premieres on Disney+, with certain facets of Daredevil: Born Again admittedly even surprising Cox himself during production. With Marvel Studios letting the PG tradition slide this time around, the show indeed looks set to live up to all the brutal promises made by cast members. Fans will simply have to wait and see how exactly the Kingpin’s newly foreshadowed changes factor into this new paradigm.

Daredevil: Born Again is set to hit Disney+ for streaming on March 4, 2025.

Daredevil: Born Again

Release Date

March 4, 2025

Showrunner

Chris Ord

Directors

Michael Cuesta, Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson, Jeffrey Nachmanoff

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Source: SFX