'Daredevil': Charlie Cox on differences in his MCU return, how Vincent D'Onofrio never gave up hope

Daredevil is officially back. After a celebrated guest-starring role on She-Hulk: Attorney at Law put him front-and-center in the MCU, Charlie Cox is ready to take the Devil of Hell's Kitchen to new heights with his upcoming Disney+ series Daredevil: Born Again, cementing the character's place alongside other Marvel Studios heroes.

But questions remain about Dardedevil's future, many of them stemming from the years Cox spent playing the character over on Netflix, in a universe that was simultaneously perhaps already a part of the larger MCU and perhaps its own self-contained world of street-level heroes. Is Cox still playing the same guy? Will Born Again fully reference all the events of the Netflix shows? Speaking to THR, Cox made it clear that he's not yet sure how the whole story will go, but offered his own educated guess as to the approach. 

"I honestly don’t know. I haven’t really gotten to that point with the writers of our next Daredevil show," Cox said. "So I haven’t read any scripts yet, and we haven’t really talked at length about what this current iteration will be like. Just by the fact that they’re using me as an actor to play the part, it’s clear that there are going to be some consistencies and there are also going to be some differences. What they are and how we integrate the two is going to be the challenge of the new show. These things are really complicated, and obviously, opinions are always divided. What people like is always varied, but we have an opportunity to at least take what worked really well and then also add some cool elements, ideas, concepts and themes that we weren’t able to do before. So it’s Daredevil, but upgraded."

To some extent, these are the questions that have been gnawing at fans ever since the movement to get Daredevil back on track in the MCU started to really gain steam, but there's no real reason Born Again can't have it both ways. We know that Kingpin (Vincent D'Onofrio) is also back in the MCU, so the show can comment on the shared history of the characters, and of course it could definitely draft Karen Page, Foggy Nelson, and other supporting characters back into service. It could even reference all that business with The Defenders, or it could simply choose to leave that, and other elements, firmly in the past, and focus on Matt Murdock's current conflicts. It doesn't remove anything, just selectively acknowledges certain elements. 

Speaking of D'Onofrio, who made his return on Hawkeye just as Cox was popping back up in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Cox noted that he and his co-star have maintained a friendship in the years since Daredevil ended its Netflix run. In fact, it was D'Onofrio who predicted that one day they'd both be getting a call from Marvel Studios, even when Cox was no longer prepared to believe that.

"For years, we would just speak as friends," Cox said. "The show had ended, and everything else had moved on, so we were just mates. But he would always say, 'They’re going to call us.' And I’d get off the phone and be like, 'No, they’re not, buddy. It’s over. Let it go. Too much time has passed.' So he was right all along. I really thought he was delusional about that. (Laughs.) We chatted the other day, and I was like, 'What do you know?' And he’s like, 'Well, I heard this, and when I spoke to the writers, they told me this.' And I was like, 'Well, I heard this. So maybe that makes sense.'"

So apparently, if you want the inside track on Marvel Studios, get Vincent D'Onofrio's phone number.

Daredevil: Born Again arrives in 2024.

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