[Warning: This article contains Daredevil: Born Again season 1 episode 1 spoilers.] “His heart is still beating.” That’s what Matt Murdock repeatedly told himself from behind bars as his heightened senses heard his lawyer and friend, Foggy Nelson, be stabbed to death in the pages of 2006’s Daredevil #82. After Brian Michael Bendis’ character-defining Daredevil run ended with the Man Without Fear imprisoned in Ryker’s alongside his arch-nemesis — Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin of Crime — Ed Brubaker’s six-part “The Devil in Cell-Block D” began with the shocking death of a character who had been a part of the book since its very first issue in 1964.
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Just as shocking was the death of Elden Henson’s Foggy Nelson in the opening minutes of Daredevil: Born Again, which saw the assassin Bullseye (Wilson Bethel) shoot and kill the attorney at law during a night out with partners Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) and Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll). Suited up as Daredevil, Matt battled Bullseye as he listened to Foggy’s heart slow — and once his heart finally stopped beating, threw Foggy’s killer off a roof.
Bullseye survived his four-story plummet to the street below, but Foggy bled out and died. Or did he? The official Daredevil Instagram account cites artist Michael Lark’s panels from Daredevil #82 as inspiration for the “Heaven’s Half Hour” episode of Born Again, in which Foggy is apparently killed.
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Fans were blindsided by Foggy’s death, which happened onscreen and resulted in Matt trading in his horned Daredevil cowl for a braille obituary program from Foggy’s funeral (which happened off-screen). It seems that Foggy Nelson is dead and buried, never to return… except that’s exactly what happened in the comics.
Just issues into Brubaker’s run, Daredevil #87 concluded the “Devil in Cell-Block D” arc by revealing that Foggy survived the attempt on his life when he was locked in a cell and shanked by prison inmates. (Although Matt heard Foggy’s heart stop beating as he bled out and died, it was revealed later Foggy was resuscitated in an ambulance.) Matt — who had been arrested by the FBI after his alleged secret identity as Daredevil leaked in the press — even attended Foggy’s funeral in handcuffs.
But Daredevil #88, “The Secret Life of Foggy Nelson,” revealed the truth: that FBI higher-ups had Foggy recovering from his injuries in protective custody under the assumed name “Everett Williams” (a homage to Daredevil co-creator Bill Everett, who was born William Blake Everett).
Because Foggy was targeted by Daredevil’s enemies, he was whisked out of surgery and into witness relocation. Foggy tried to contact The Daily Bugle reporter Ben Urich and alert Matt (who had already escaped prison with the Punisher’s help and was overseas chasing Foggy’s killer), but the Feds stashed Foggy in a safehouse in the suburbs. Who was it that targeted Foggy Nelson?
Vanessa Fisk, the Kingpin’s terminally-ill wife. In Brubaker and Lark’s Daredevil #92, it was revealed that Vanessa Fisk faked Foggy’s death and had her FBI connections stash him in witness protection in an attempt to get a wrathful Matt to kill her husband in prison.
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After she exposed the FBI’s “Framegate” scandal to put Daredevil’s secret identity back in the bottle, Matt returned home to Hell’s Kitchen and heard a familiar sound: Foggy Nelson’s heartbeat.
New episodes of Marvel’s Daredevil: Born Again air Tuesday nights on Disney+.
