‘Daredevil’ Season 3 First-Look Photos Released

Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) is back in black in first-look photos from Daredevil Season Three.

After staying behind with lover Elektra (Elodie Yung) during a cave-in at the end of team-up miniseries The Defenders, Daredevil was presumed dead. Now the battered crime-fighter goes into the third season of his solo series physically and emotionally damaged with failing heightened senses and no sign of his ninja sometimes-girlfriend.

“Matt starts the season broken physically, broken emotionally, and broken spiritually,” new showrunner Erik Oleson told EW, who debuted the photos. “He’s angry at God, he’s angry at the fact that he had risked his life to do God’s work, and he’s questioning whether or not he was a fool.”

Matt abandons his horned alter ego and its sporty devil-like suit in favor of his stripped down ninja-like black suit, which he first donned in his earliest outings as a bone-breaking vigilante.

The hero, looking for escapism, “goes to pretty much the darkest place you can,” Oleson said. “When he realizes that he’s incapable of being Daredevil, he would rather just end it than go forward in his life without abilities. He’s decided to set aside his Matt Murdock persona and just be the Devil, to isolate the lighter part of himself.”

Though the believed-dead Matt reunites with best friend and business partner Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson), their reunion isn’t a happy one.

“Foggy has been trying to move on from Matt’s memory, or at least move on with his life,” Oleson explained. “If you thought one of your close friends was dead and he decided not to tell you he survived, you would probably have some issues with that.”

While Daredevil dredges up the past by way of Matt’s formerly retired black costume, the new season brings plenty of newness to the table in the form of Matt’s mother, “a tough, Hell’s Kitchen-born-and-bred nun” Sister Maggie (Joanne Whalley), FBI Agent Ray (Jay Ali) and “psychologically tortured FBI sharpshooter” (Wilson Bethel), who was unofficially confirmed as Bullseye last month.

Another Season One favorite returns in the form of jailed crime lord Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), the Kingpin, who “has gotten smarter, more calculated, and more manipulative,” Oleson said. “I very much wanted to tell a story that’s relevant to the world around us. I looked at the show as a way to examine how tyrants manipulate in order to push their own agenda and cause fear and distrust.”

Daredevil Season Three launches October 19 exclusively on Netflix.