Daredevil: Born Again’s MCU Cameo Rule Is a Good Thing, Even if It Disappoints Marvel Fans

There was a new rule that Daredevil: Born Again showrunner Dario Scardapane revealed, which is a good thing for the Disney+ MCU series. In the first season of the revived Marvel series, Charlie Cox’s Daredevil was joined by fellow Netflix characters that included Kingpin, the Punisher, Karen Page, Foggy Nelson, Vanessa Fisk, and Bullseye. However, while Daredevil has shown up in other shows like She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and the movie Spider-Man: No Way Home, no one from the MCU movies showed up in his solo series. That still won’t happen in future seasons, at least as far as the MCU Disney+ street-level series are concerned.

When talking about the future of Daredevil: Born Again, Scardapane said the series will remain self-contained, and it won’t bring in MCU movie heroes. “There are other characters that are going to be popping up in movies and stuff, and that all goes into the larger MCU of it all,” Scardapane said. “The joke we make is, ‘Oh, those guys are uptown – we’re downtown!’ We kind of have a pocket that’s in this world of Hell’s Kitchen, in this world of New York.”

Daredevil: Born Again Should Avoid MCU Storylines

This is a great idea and is something that all the street-level shows on Disney+ should subscribe to. This is one of the big reasons the Defenders shows on Netflix remain popular because fans just had to keep up with those heroes and that world and didn’t need to do homework on all the movies (well over 20) and other Disney+ shows (nearing 20). As long as a person knows what is happening in the Daredevil shows, that is all that matters here.

While Daredevil showed up on She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, what happened there had nothing to do with anything fans watching Daredevil: Born Again needed to know about. Plus, that was a Disney+ series, and it wasn’t one of the MCU films with the running storylines there. However, don’t expect people like Hulk showing up on Disney+ again as he did in She-Hulk, although that wasn’t a street-level series. Hawkeye had Yelena Belova and introduced Swordsman, the latter of whom appeared in Daredevil: Born Again, but once again, this won’t happen as much in the future.

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD was connected to the MCU when it was on ABC. With Agent Coulson returning after his seeming death in The Avengers, the series even tied in with Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Hydra attempting a takeover. That hurt the series. Similarly, Hawkeye and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier tied into events in the MCU, which hurt the latter series, while the former was so good that it didn’t matter. It wasn’t until Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD broke away from the MCU that the show thrived. The MCU is proving the same thing can be true with Daredevil: Born Again.

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Disney+ Heroes Can Still Show Up in the MCU Movies

However, the good news is that the Daredevil: Born Again rule doesn’t count for the MCU movies themselves. Just because someone like Sam Wilson’s Captain America or Shang-Chi won’t show up in Daredevil: Born Again, it doesn’t mean that Daredevil can’t show up in a movie in the future. Since the Punisher is in Spider-Man: Brand New Day this year, Marvel has already shown they can cross over in that direction. “I always think that maybe these characters take little vacations into the larger world, but the story that we’re focusing on is really granular,” Dario Scardapane said.

This means that Daredevil could pop up in Avengers: Secret Wars or a similar movie with crossover heroes and villains. It also means that Kingpin could show up in a movie to cause problems for heroes there. This allows fans who follow the Disney+ series-level heroes to get rewarded when they show up in films. However, since it doesn’t cross over the other way, people who enjoy the shows won’t have to worry about their “homework” when someone shows up in the series.

It is obvious that this only counts, at least for now, on the street-level characters like Daredevil, Punisher, Jessica Jones, White Tiger, and more. It almost assuredly won’t count for people like Kate Bishop’s Hawkeye, and Kamala Khan’s Ms. Marvel has already had her own MCU movie, when she teamed with Captain Marvel and Monica Rambeau in Marvels. If anything, this will do nothing, but help shows like Daredevil: Born Again while making the MCU films still feel special.

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