Is Devil’s Reign the Next MCU Crossover?

[Warning: This story contains Echo spoilers.] Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. Marvel’s Echo ended with Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), the Kingpin of Crime, setting his recently-restored sight on the New York mayoral race after being rejected by his protégé Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox). Echo‘s post-credits scene set up Daredevil: Born Again and Fisk’s return to Hell’s Kitchen, where he’ll contend with his adversary: blind attorney and vigilante Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox). The upcoming Disney+ series will borrow from the Mayor Fisk storyline in the pages of Chip Zdarsky and Marco Checchetto’s run on Daredevil, but even the Man Without Fear may dread what comes next: Devil’s Reign. 

The Marvel comic crossover event spanned the six-issue Devil’s Reign and tie-in issues featuring street-level superheroes Daredevil, Elektra, Spider-Man, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, and Moon Knight, who were targeted when New York Mayor Wilson Fisk declared the Powers Act to make vigilantism a criminal offense. Fisk enforced his superhero ban with a new team of Thunderbolts — including officially-sanctioned supervillains Shocker, Electro, Rhino, Whiplash, Doctor Octopus, and their leader, U.S. Agent — and Thunderbolt Units, a police force of specialized officers tasked with upholding the law and arresting superheroes.

After the Thunderbolts arrested Tony Stark, Moon Knight, and Reed Richards and Sue Storm of the Fantastic Four, Captain America mobilized the city’s outlawed superheroes to oust Fisk from office. Meanwhile, former Harlem hero-for-hire Luke Cage challenged the incumbent mayor through more legitimate means: by announcing his own run for mayor.

Fisk kept Zebediah Killgrave, a.k.a. the Purple Man, inside a “Psycho-Prism” engineered by Doctor Octopus. He then rounded up Killgrave’s children as part of a plot to amplify the Purple Man’s powers of persuasion and brainwash voters into re-electing Mayor Fisk. With the city’s costumed vigilantes forced underground, Fisk’s Thunderbolts and a legion of anti-crime drones controlled a crime-free but authoritarian New York.

Fisk then used the Purple Man’s powers to remember Daredevil’s secret identity after his memories were altered by the Purple Children. He beat Murdock’s brother to death and sicced his Thunderbolts on the Avengers assembled to protect the Purple Children, then had the Purple Man mind control the city’s citizens as an army of purple-powered people. 

Fisk’s endgame was to abandon his empire and his life of crime with his wife, Typhoid Mary, but Daredevil vowed to stop the Kingpin by any means necessary. Before the Catholic Matt Murdock could kill Kingpin and damn his soul forever, Elektra convinced Daredevil to let the defeated Fisk live.

The Thunderbolts Unit arrested the ousted mayor, but this was a ploy by his crime boss son, Byron “Butch” Fisk, who had resisted inheriting the Kingpin’s criminal empire. Fisk’s secret backers who put him in office, the powerful string-pulling siblings the Stromwyns, freed Fisk so he could run for president. But Fisk refused the deal. “A Fisk bows to no man. You don’t make deals with the Devil when you are the Devil,” Fisk told Butch, granting him his “inheritance”: the crown of Kingpin. 

Fisk retired to the mutant nation island of Krakoa with his wife, Cage was elected mayor of New York, and Matt and Elektra — both operating as Daredevil — set out to take down the ninja clan called the Hand.

According to online rumors, Daredevil: Born Again ties into the upcoming Spider-Man 4, which is being described as a “street-level Civil War.” If Fisk wins his election in Born Again and implements the anti-superhero Powers Act, it would outlaw New York-based vigilantes like Daredevil (Charlie Cox), Spider-Man (Tom Holland), the Punisher (Jon Bernthal), Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter), Luke Cage (Mike Colter), and Hawkeye (Hailee Steinfeld). This would position D’Onofrio’s Kingpin as not only the villain of Spider-Man 4, but the Defenders-verse corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that Marvel Studios recently confirmed is MCU canon.

All episodes of Marvel’s Echo are now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.