Daredevil: Born Again season 3: how does it fit with Doomsday?

Daredevil: Born Again faced an awkward puzzle. Its third season was being shot for a 2027 release, yet it had to share a New York City with the global upheaval of Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars. This piece sets out how I think that could make sense, why the show's season 2 audience fell so sharply, and whether Marvel should tie it more closely to the rest of the MCU.

Daredevil: Born Again (2025) stars Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio. I felt some moments in season 2 were better than anything from the Netflix era, with the diner scene singled out. That scene "might have been the peak moment of everything we saw in Daredevil Born Again," and we agreed that the highs of season 2 are very high.

Marvel's lessons from Agents of SHIELD and Kamala Khan

My argument is that Marvel only needs to do a better job of franchise management than it did in the Agents of SHIELD era, and let characters from the TV shows appear in the films. That has already started. Wanda Maximoff showed up in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Kamala Khan appeared in The Marvels, and Loki was set to appear in Doomsday.

There have been problems before, though. At times it looked as if the people in charge of the movies didn't always watch the shows. Still, we agreed that the Kamala from Ms. Marvel was the same Kamala who appeared in The Marvels. My take on that film is that Kevin Feige didn't have full control over it, it couldn't be properly marketed, and the final product was confusing. We also agreed that Iman Vellani, who plays Kamala, is a star.

I hope Kamala shows up in Doomsday, or at least Secret Wars. Season 1 of Born Again carried a promise that Matt Murdock would have a family dinner in Jersey City with the Khan family. I floated reaching that at some point in season 3 as a possible ending, especially if Kamala becomes a bigger part of the mutant saga. Season 3 doesn't need to be a big mutant story, but I think this could be one good way to tie it in. My plea is also for Brad Winderbaum and Feige to make a mutant show, such as an X-Mansion or mutant academy series.

Is Bullseye a mutant or peak human?

A question spotted on Reddit asked whether Bullseye is a mutant or simply peak human. My first answer was that it seems pretty clear he's peak human. The counterpoint raised in our discussion was that if he had his abilities from a young age, it could imply they're in his genetics. The young Bullseye was shown throwing a baseball against a brick wall outside an orphanage with perfect aim, which seemed like something he had since he was a kid. The other possibility raised was that it's just training.

Either way, I saw that as an opportunity. In Ms. Marvel, someone simply mentions the word mutant, and fans seize on it. In my opinion, these blink and you'll miss it moments are the most effective connective tissue, because they make a show feel part of the wider world without an exposition dump. On season 2 of Daredevil, though, we agreed those moments weren't even being delivered, with the caveat that it was possible I had blinked and missed one.

Why Doomsday creates a continuity problem for Daredevil: Born Again season 3

The nagging issue for me was how season 3 can take place in the same New York City where the events of Doomsday happen. Feige and the Russo brothers had indicated that Secret Wars would go to Battleworld. The only way I could see it work is if the Earth-616 version of New York is left largely intact by the incursion events. The sky turns red for 72 hours and everyone is a little worried, much like San Francisco during the Canadian wildfires.

Under my theory, characters get extracted and teleported to Battleworld, and the Earths destroyed in Doomsday might include Earth-828, Earth-10005 and maybe another spider world. But the Doomsday trailer was described as showing Shuri, Namor and Ben Grimm in a desert that is really the ocean floor, with water pushed back to dry out Talokan, off the Yucatán Peninsula in the Caribbean Sea.

That felt global and apocalyptic enough to make me doubt it. It was hard for me to see how audiences could see Doomsday in December and then, in March and April 2027, see a Defenders reunion fighting villains in New York. The alternatives were that New York was left untouched enough for a Daredevil show, or that the whole city was extracted to a snow globe universe. That second option would put season 3 on Battleworld, and my view is that Feige and the Russos wouldn't let the Born Again team further the Battleworld narrative.

Setting Daredevil before Doomsday, like Ant-Man and the Wasp

Another option was that season 3 happens before Doomsday. We agreed that Doomsday would be such a huge event that it would be hard to tell audiences everything they had just seen was set earlier. But Marvel has done that before. Ant-Man and the Wasp arrived after Infinity War in 2018, was set before it, and tied in with an ending and a post credits scene.

So maybe season 3 is mostly set right before Doomsday and ends with Matt Murdock and everyone looking up at the same red sky, in an episode around May 2027 tying in with something like Avengers Tower being ripped apart. That prompted a joke about a blind man looking up and announcing that the sky is red. My fix was that Matt hears the sounds of an incursion while it is reflected in his red sunglasses. I felt we had fixed it there, and that this is one way it could make sense.

There was a catch, as I see it. Ant-Man and the Wasp set up Endgame as a Scott Lang event, so the same approach would mean promising that Matt Murdock's Daredevil appears in Battleworld in Secret Wars. That promise would make season 3 must see television. It would also raise the question of whether it was the final season, because a fourth season would become a Doomsday or Secret Wars aftermath show.

The season 2 audience drop: 48% fewer views and 56% less watch time

The other surprise for me was the size of the drop from season 1 to season 2: roughly 50%, which I'd call significant. More precisely, it was a 48% drop in views and around a 56% drop in watch time, and we agreed watch time is the more important figure.

Some fans who strongly support Daredevil content have been denying those numbers and spreading misinformation, for example by claiming season 1 was a binge drop. My rebuttal is that season 1 had only one extra episode, which ran about 30 minutes, and that season 2 runtimes were all longer, so the comparison is roughly apples to apples.

I'm not saying the show deserved the drop, since I think season 2 had higher highs. But fewer people were tuning in, and I put much of that down to Disney Plus being more expensive and the TV-MA rating stopping kids from randomly finding it. Elsewhere in our discussion, it was said that what drew interest back for season 2 was not season 1's quality but a strong trailer and Marvel's message that season 1 had been pieced together and the team now had it "on lock". Seeing season 2, the reaction was: "This is you on lock?"

Why Disney's third season for Daredevil was a surprise

I think Disney Plus is probably stingy with multi season pickups. WandaVision has no true season 2, though Agatha could be argued as a spiritual successor and VisionQuest as part of a trilogy. I thought Wonder Man was a great small stakes superhero show, yet its second season pickup still surprised me.

One possible reason for that stinginess is budget. Daredevil probably costs less to make because it has much less CGI, unlike She-Hulk, whose VFX budget drew attention. So it surprised me that Disney was so bullish on Daredevil. I feel there must be a plan for how it connects to everything else, but the show itself made it hard to work out what that plan could be.

Daredevil: Born Again is serialized, not an open-ended Agents of SHIELD

To me, the two seasons feel like a battle for the soul of New York City between Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk. Agents of SHIELD had arcs, but it was an open world with villains of the week and returning characters, and it expressly positioned itself on the periphery of the big moments. Fisk putting New York under martial law, by contrast, is a big moment, big enough that you'd expect it to matter to Peter Parker or anyone walking through New York in Doomsday.

Loki is one example. Its first trailer, with the heavily hyped D.B. Cooper scene, suggested something like Doctor Who, Rick and Morty, Quantum Leap or The X-Files, with Loki behind real world conspiracies. Instead it became a six episode character study, and season 2 went further with Victor Timely and the origins of the TVA. We both loved it, and it was a pleasant surprise. With WandaVision, we first thought each episode would be a different sitcom parody, and it ended up more like a long movie.

Marvel hasn't yet made an open-ended Agents of SHIELD style show, leaning toward prestige TV instead. A home base show on Disney Plus would need lower weekly stakes, but that makes it less necessary for the Marvel audience. The discussion acknowledged that Marvel had a difficult challenge ahead, and the point was also made that it's a challenge of Marvel's own making. Maybe Agatha was the closest recent example, with each episode distinct but one road leading to a mysterious destination.

Daredevil: Born Again needs to feel part of the MCU

Daredevil's the show I'm always rooting for, and being a Daredevil fan reminds me of being a Jets fan. "This is our year. This is our year," goes the hopeful refrain every season, before the quarterback explodes into a ball of confetti.

If Marvel is going to put this much into Daredevil by giving it a third season, I want it to be something that feels more integrated with the rest of the MCU than this does.