Despite not releasing any new episodes in four years, Marvel’s Daredevil has once again become one of the most-watched TV shows in all of streaming. The Netflix series was cancelled when Marvel Studios absorbed Marvel Television and announced plans to make its own TV programs, but fans have continued to ask for characters from Daredevil to make the jump to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That jump finally happened in December, and Netflix’s Daredevil series saw a massive spike in viewership because of it.
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On December 17th, Spider-Man: No Way Home swung into theaters and ushered the first Marvel Netflix character into the MCU, as Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock helped Peter Parker with his legal troubles. Just five days later, in the Hawkeye finale, Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin joined the franchise. Nielsen has finally released the streaming numbers from that week, and Daredevil somehow found itself in the Top 10.
According to Nielsen’s latest streaming report, Daredevil was viewed for a total of 195 million minutes from December 20th through December 26th, making it the eighth-most-watched original streaming series during that span. It was topped by the likes of Hawkeye, The Witcher, Emily in Paris, and a few others, but all of those shows recently released new episodes.
Fans have been asking for more of Cox and D’Onofrio (and most other stars from the Defenders franchise) to join the MCU for years. Both actors have always been vocal about wanting to reprise their roles, and they’ve finally been given the chance. It’s been a long road, though, and to say they were disappointed when Daredevil was axed would be an understatement.
“I don’t think any of us were okay,” D’Onofrio recently told Marvel News Desk. “I think that we were like, ‘Oh okay, we had a hit show and now it’s gone.’ But shortly after that, at same time the #SaveDaredevil groups started to rise, the cast, most of us I believe, but I know Charlie (Cox) and I for sure, and Deborah (Ann Woll), I think we started to learn the reasons why that happened. So we understood what Marvel was doing because Disney+ coming out….When you’re in this business a long time like we have all been, it kind of made sense business-wise. What didn’t make sense to us was why we wouldn’t continue that show or the idea of how that worked and how well it worked. Conceptually, I think we were disappointed but I think we all understood what was going on and it sort of was inevitable. In this business you learn to accept things because you know its a business in the end and there’s nothing you can really do about it.”
Are you glad to see Daredevil and Kingpin joining the MCU? Let us know in the comments!
