Before Daredevil: Born Again premiered, I told myself I would be content if the show ended up even half as good as the Netflix original. Of course, I wanted it to be better than that relatively low bar, but given the unfortunate quality of some of Disney+’s other Marvel TV output—Secret Invasion certainly comes to mind—I didn’t want to get my hopes up too high.
I’m so glad to have been proven wrong.
Related: ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ secretly lets Marvel’s ‘Captain America: Brave New World’ misstep off the hook, and nobody’s realized on We Got This Covered
Even though we’ve only seen the first two episodes of Daredevil: Born Again, I’m ecstatic. It has a different feel from the original, especially in how it’s filmed, but it is an honest continuation of the original Daredevil series while still presenting itself as something new, a distinct chapter in Matt Murdock’s life that fits in with the larger MCU without being dictated by it. Others may not agree, of course, and that’s absolutely fine, but I can’t wait to see what happens next, and I’m so glad that Daredevil: Born Again season 2 has already been confirmed.
More than anything, though, when I finished watching the show’s two-episode premiere, I felt an immense relief knowing seven whole episodes were still to come. Except for She-Hulk, WandaVision, and Agatha All Along, which, like Born Again, had nine episodes each, the MCU’s shows have all been treated as miniseries. Six episodes, many less than an hour long, to introduce us to entirely new characters and sometimes even new mythologies never seemed enough. The stories often dragged on while somehow simultaneously feeling rushed. (Echo was granted a paltry five episodes). Add in the fact that most of them had a major impact on the theatrical storylines, too, and it was clear there was too much going on at once. Nothing was ever as satisfying as it should have been.
Perhaps the only six-episode series to have escaped that fate is Loki, and that’s only because, before Born Again, it was the one Disney+ live-action Marvel show to be granted a second season. At the same time, WandaVision and She-Hulk may have been handed nine episodes, but that’s only because they were structured as sitcoms; as such, their episodes were even shorter. All in all, Agatha All Along and Daredevil: Born Again are the only real exceptions to the rule, and they both conclusively prove that Marvel’s miniseries formula should be a thing of the past.
Let’s be honest—while the MCU shows provided interesting perspectives and, at times, interesting stories—I still really love Ms. Marvel, even though it also had issues with pacing and storytelling—they were far from the success stories they could have and arguably should have been. Again, let’s remind ourselves of the mess of Secret Invasion. Imagine wasting Olivia Colman like that! Nine episodes is a perfect compromise, a nice bridge between the six episodes of the MCU’s previous shows and the 13 episodes favored by Netflix’s Marvel content. As both Agatha All Along and Daredevil prove, nine hour-long episodes allow writers to structure episodes like actual TV shows rather than one part of an extended, six-hour movie while avoiding the mid-season lull that plagued some of the Defenders’ series.
Charlie Cox and company deserve this renaissance, but other Marvel characters introduced (or reintroduced) in Disney+ shows deserve better, too (I hope Ironheart doesn’t suffer from the six-episode mandate). Hopefully, with all the recent changes the studio has undergone, Marvel will finally realize that “less is more” isn’t always the right tactic. TV shows should be given the chance to be TV shows. That includes being renewed and not changing the fate of, or depending too heavily on, what happens in the movies.
Published: Mar 6, 2025 01:31 pm