Disney Plus’s Daredevil: Born Again returned Tuesday with its Season 2 premiere, “The Northern Star,” and the show wasted no time announcing its intentions. Matt Murdock is back in the mask, Wilson Fisk is the mayor of New York, and the entire season is built on the bones of Charles Soule’s 2017 comic run, written during the first Trump administration as a direct political protest. The creative team is not hiding this. Actor Matthew Lillard, who plays CIA operative Mr. Charles, confirmed in interviews that the show plans to lecture audiences on politics. The first episode delivers on that promise in the most on-the-nose way possible.
The setup: Fisk has created an Anti-Vigilante Task Force to hunt down costumed heroes, effectively making them illegal in New York. Daredevil, dressed head to toe in black, runs a street-level resistance operation against the regime. Karen Page works the investigation angle, connecting with BB Urich, a media flack who publicly spins for Fisk while privately digging up dirt on him. The parallels to contemporary political discourse are not subtle. They are the entire point as par for the course with Marvel.
