The Punisher Star Jon Bernthal Says Daredevil: Born Again Takes the Marvel Series a "Step Further"

One batch, two batch, penny and dime...

By Cameron Bonomolo

Jon Bernthal is crossing off another entry in the Punisher's War Journal. Five years after he last played vigilante Frank Castle in season 2 of The Punisher on Netflix, Bernthal is back with a vengeance in Daredevil: Born Again. The Marvel Television series — which premiered its violent first footage at Disney's D23 convention over the weekend, offering first looks at new villain Muse, the costumed crime-fighter White Tiger, and the grittier tone of the TV-MA-rated Echo — is a continuation of the three-season Netflix show that launched the street-level corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2015.

"In Daredevil: Born Again, we've channeled the essence of the original series but set an entirely new path for Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk," Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said about Charlie Cox's Daredevil and Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin, appearing on screen together for the first time since Daredevil's season 3 finale in 2018.

The new Disney+ series also brings back Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson), and Bullseye (Wilson Bethel), and is a revival — rather than a reboot — of the Netflix version of Daredevil that ran from 2015 to 2018.

"I think if you're a fan of the show that you saw before, you're gonna be a fan of this. I think we're just taking it a step further," Bernthal told Marvel Entertainment following Marvel Studio's D23 presentation. "We're all here, we're all enormously happy to be with each other, we're proud of what we did. If you're a fan of [Marvel's Daredevil], you're gonna be enormously happy."

Newcomers to the cast include Michael Gandolfini (The Many Saints of Newark), Margarita Levieva (Star Wars: The Acolyte), and Ayelet Zurer (Man of Steel). Feige is producing the series with Brad Winderbaum, Marvel Studios' Head of Streaming, Television and Animation. 

"Daredevil is incredible. It's similar in some ways to X-Men '97, because it's reviving something that the fans love, but it's taking it in a new direction," Winderbaum teased on the Official Marvel Podcast. "These characters have matured. The universe is different than it was. Things have changed. Society's changed." 

"Matt and Wilson have changed, and their characters are gonna collide in ways we've never seen before," he added. "It's no longer enough to try and murder each other, there's a whole game of politics at play."

Related:

Marvel's Daredevil spawned the interconnected series Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Punisher, and The Defenders, which were all cancelled between 2018 and 2019. Disney added all six shows to Disney+ in 2022, and by 2024, the streamer's official MCU timeline was updated with the "Defenders-Verse" series.

Marvel Studios' Daredevil: Born Again premieres in March 2025 on Disney+.

Trending Now: