Is [SPOILER] Really Dead in Daredevil: Born Again?

[Warning: This article contains major spoilers from Daredevil: Born Again season 1 episode 1.] In 2015, the premiere episode of Marvel’s Daredevil introduced blind lawyer Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) and best friend Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson), Attorneys at Law. The “Into the Ring” series premiere also introduced Nelson & Murdock’s first-ever client — secretary-turned-homicide suspect Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) — after she was framed for murder by Kingpin Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio). And just as that series started with Karen covered in her dead friend’s blood, new series Daredevil: Born Again begins with a blood-covered Karen watching her friend die in her arms.

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Tuesday night’s heart-pounding series premiere saw the assassin Bullseye (Wilson Bethel) shoot Foggy dead outside Josie’s Bar, only to then be beaten and thrown from a roof by a wrathful Daredevil. Not only is Nelson, Murdock & Page no more — the firm is shuttered, and Karen leaves Hell’s Kitchen for San Francisco — but a guilt-ridden Matt is Daredevil no more.

One year later, Bullseye is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, but it’s not justice for Foggy. Justice “won’t be served because I don’t get to see him again,” Matt testifies. “We don’t get to see Foggy again today. Or tomorrow. Or ever. Because my friend is dead, killed on the whim of a violent and disturbed man. A self-styled assassin with a grudge, out to murder his perceived enemies.”

“In the absence of justice, the court can punish this man. And I urge you to do so to the fullest extent the law allows. Because that punishment is the closest that any of us will ever get to justice,” says Matt, who keeps Foggy’s funeral program as a reminder.

Fall From Grace: Matt Murdock Goes to Hell

It’s a tragic twist on the events of the comics, where defense attorney Foggy’s fate is also tied to Matt’s double life. To recap: in the Daredevil comic book run by artist Alex Maleev and writer Brian Michael Bendis (a consulting producer on Daredevil: Born Again), Matt’s secret identity was outed by a tabloid newspaper. The alleged Man Without Fear refuted the report in (ahem) fear of being disbarred or jailed.

Wilson Fisk leveraged proof that Matt Murdock is Daredevil (intel the Kingpin obtained and used to destroy Matt’s life in Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Born Again) to make a deal with the FBI in exchange for his own freedom. Fisk’s alleged dirt on Daredevil was in the pages of the “Murdock Papers” — proof that turned out to be a ruse to draw Daredevil into the open.

After a wild goose chase for the Murdock Papers ended with Daredevil brutally beating Bullseye in a street brawl, and then Daredevil being shot by the mercenary Paladin (a hired gun for the FBI), Matt was arrested and jailed in 2005’s Daredevil #80.

As Matt’s counsel in United States of America vs. Matt Murdock, Foggy requested a trial by jury, and Matt pleaded not guilty. Matt was denied bail by the judge while awaiting trial and was remanded to federal custody at Ryker’s Island at the same time that the Kingpin walked free. But when Fisk was immediately re-arrested by the FBI for the murder of one of his subordinates, he was sentenced to prison at — you guessed it — Ryker’s.

The Defense Rests: The Death of Foggy Nelson

2006’s Daredevil #82 kicked off writer Ed Brubaker and artist Michael Lark’s run on the book with the six-part “The Devil in Cell-Block D,” where all hell brook loose. Foggy got Matt into a protective wing at Ryker’s just as a new Daredevil took to the streets of Hell’s Kitchen: Danny Rand, a.k.a. Iron Fist, making a case for reasonable doubt.

As Danny-Devil raised doubts about Daredevil’s identity, and with Matt effectively on trial for being a vigilante, Foggy faced a moral dilemma: Would he lie in court? Put Matt on the stand and suborn perjury? Before such questions could be answered, he learned the FBI filed a motion to challenge his client’s need to be in protective custody.

Although Foggy argued that Matt hadn’t been convicted and was in prison pending trial, and the federal government hadn’t proved Matt Murdock is Daredevil, FBI Director Davis pressured Ryker Warden Cole into moving Murdock from protective custody to gen-pop — and then moving Fisk into the same cell-block.

Foggy hired private investigator Dakota North, a friend of Jessica Jones, who learned from an FBI mole that they were slow-walking Foggy’s motion to expedite Matt’s trial. The Feds wanted Matt and Fisk in gen-pop so that Daredevil and Kingpin would die, either by killing each other or as the result of prison violence. If Foggy could just get Matt on the stand to say he’s not Daredevil, no New York jury would convict. He then swore an oath to Matt: “I will do whatever I have to. I will not let them do this to you.”

But before Foggy could get Matt another appeal on bail, or get him into the courtroom, a rogue guard locked Dakota and Foggy in a cell with inmates. From his cell in solitary, Matt could only listen as an inmate shanked Foggy. Matt heard Foggy’s heart beating, beating, beating… until it wasn’t. Dakota would later report that paramedics had stabilized Foggy in the ambulance, but in Daredevil #83, Matt attended his best friend’s funeral in handcuffs.

And so it seemed that was the end of Franklin “Foggy” Nelson: stabbed to death while visiting his client in prison, all because Matt Murdock is Daredevil. Except the story took another turn.

After Frank Castle, the Punisher, surrendered himself to the police so as to end up in Ryker’s, Frank helped Matt escape during a prison riot orchestrated by Ryker’s shot callers. Frank made it look like he took the blind Matt hostage to escape Ryker’s, and Warden Cole covered up the prison break by erasing any potentially incriminating video footage of Matt.

Meanwhile, Dakota and Daily Bugle investigative reporter (and Daredevil ally) Ben Urich investigated a lawyer named Alton Lennox, the only lead on Foggy’s killer. It was a trail that Matt picked up when he resumed his Daredevil identity in Daredevil #87: Daredevil, Iron Fist, Ben, and Dakota converged at the offices of Murtaugh and Lennox, Attorneys at Law. As Matt continued to get to the bottom of the FBI-based conspiracy, the issue ended with a shocking revelation: Foggy Nelson was alive and in FBI protective custody.

Under the Radar: Foggy’s Killer Revealed

It was ultimately revealed that Foggy was put into FBI witness protection with an assumed name, “Everett Williams,” as he had become a target. Few knew the secret that the FBI faked Foggy’s death, least of all Matt, who found the strings-puller Lennox murdered after tracking him halfway around the world.

Matt closed in on the culprit who had manipulated everything from Fisk’s arrest to Foggy’s “death,” and Daredevil #92 revealed their identity: Vanessa Fisk. The Kingpin’s terminally-ill wife wanted revenge on Daredevil, and when she came face-to-face with Matt, told him she would also be his salvation. She offered to use Kingpin’s connections to make Matt’s problems — his outing in the press, the federal indictment — disappear if Matt Murdock, attorney at law, got her husband released from prison.

Even though Matt refused this deal with the devil, Vanessa had him exonerated when she leaked intel revealing Matt was framed in an elaborate setup by the FBI. In Daredevil #93, Matt Murdock returned to Hell’s Kitchen and heard a familiar sound: the still-beating heart of his best friend, Foggy Nelson.

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