Daredevil Star Charlie Cox on That Major Death: ”It’s Gutting”

[Warning: This article contains spoilers from the Daredevil: Born Again premiere.] Charlie Cox has described Deborah Ann Woll’s Karen Page and Elden Henson‘s Foggy Nelson as the beating heart of Daredevil. But for Matt Murdock’s best friend and fellow attorney/avocado at law, it was a heart that stopped beating just minutes into the pulse-pounding premiere of Daredevil: Born Again.

The new Marvel series opened with the revenge-seeking master marksman and assassin Bullseye (Wilson Bethel) gunning for two-thirds of Nelson, Murdock and Page outside their old haunt in Hell’s Kitchen after drawing Daredevil away from Josie’s Bar. While still blocks away, Matt’s heightened senses heard the moment Bullseye shot Foggy — and then, as Daredevil’s bar brawl with Bullseye brought them to the roof, listened as his best friend’s heart slowed and stopped beating.

RELATED: Is Foggy Really Dead in Daredevil: Born Again?

“It’s gutting,” Cox, who has played the Man Without Fear for a decade, tells ComicBook. “It’s a tough pill to swallow. There’s no getting away from it. There’s no other way to say it: I could have never imagined a world where something like that happens.”

But it is the world of Daredevil, the Marvel TV series that ran for three seasons between 2015 and 2018 on Netflix and which is now born again on Disney+. “We’re coming back after six years,” Cox adds. “We’re making another Daredevil TV show, and we want to come in hot and shake things up and be bold, and brave, and put Matt in an emotional state that he’s never been in before.”

Not only does the tragic loss push Daredevil over the edge — he commits one of the seven deadly sins when the vengeful vigilante pushes Bullseye over the edge of a roof, a fall he might not have survived if not for his Cogmium steel-reinforced spine — but “what [Foggy’s death] lends to the story going forward, it’s the catalyst of tremendous and really great drama and storytelling,” Cox says.

It’s not a decision that was made lightly. “We developed it for a long time before it was written,” executive producer and head of Marvel Television Brad Winderbaum says. “No one wanted to do it, but we all came to the realization that we needed to do it. It led to many sleepless nights and passionate debates.”

“It’s really hard to watch,” he adds, “but we needed to break Matt down to his bare essence. And if you look at the comics, often times violence comes at a cost. Being Daredevil comes at a cost. And that finality, that mortal finality, drives Matt.”

New episodes of Daredevil: Born Again premiere Tuesdays on Disney+.