At long last, Charlie Cox made his long-awaited appearance in costume as Daredevil in today’s episode of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and the detractors appear to have been awfully quiet now they’ve had the chance to assess the Man Without Fear’s return.
Sure, there were jokes, but the hotly-anticipated comeback even the show’s staunchest opponents had been waiting for more than lived up to its billing. Cox is as comfortable and charismatic as ever in the role, he generated crackling chemistry with Tatiana Maslany, and he even got to indulge in his favorite pastime: facing down bad guys in hallways. Well, almost.
The She-Hulk team knew exactly what it was doing when they had Daredevil ready to take down a raft of goons in a confined corridor, just as he’d done in every season of his own Netflix series. Right at the moment of impact, though, Jennifer Walters busts through the roof and takes them all out in one fell swoop.
In an interview with Marvel, executive producer and lead writer Jessica Gao could barely contain her glee at subverting expectations, even if it’ll no doubt raise the ire of a troll or two.
“We have to keep reminding people that this is Jen’s show, this is She-Hulk’s show. Everything in the show is like, how can we either subvert a trope or defy expectations or ground something in funny reality. That’s kind of the ethos of the show. So of course, it was just natural for this show, being so meta, that we would acknowledge and tease the classic Daredevil hallway fight. But then, of course, we would have to undercut it with our girl, She-Hulk.”
She-Hulk has given us an insight into what to expect from Daredevil: Born Again, and the MCU’s version of the superhero in general, and it’s nowhere near as bad as the internet would have you believe. If anything, it’s ratcheted up the excitement for Matt Murdock’s reintegration into the mythology tenfold, just as it should.