A New Marvel Promo Has Some Fans Looking to the Competition For Ideas

Key Takeaways

Marvel’s upcoming Daredevil: Born Again on Disney+ sparks desire among fans for an animated series based on the character.
Potential animated adaptation of Daredevil could draw inspiration from successful superhero animated shows like Batman: The Animated Series.
Quality seen in X-Men ’97 hints at bright future for Marvel animation, with Daredevil potentially benefiting from stellar adaptation.

Some of the marketing put out ahead of the release of Daredevil: Born Again by Marvel might have gone down a bit too well with fans, as one short clip posted to social media has some commenters pining for another sort of show entirely.

Daredevil has been a staple of street level crime fighting since his 1964 debut in Daredevil #1, thrilling fans with the unique take on a crime-fighting vigilante by portraying Matt Murdoch as a lawyer by day and the titular hero by night, all without being able to see. This inspirational and riveting character would only get more interesting when Netflix greenlit Daredevil, a live-action series that would put Charlie Cox in the iconic Daredevil mask as well as the dark shades and neat suits of Matt Murdock, adding a ton of depth and complexity to the character. When the rights to the character returned to Marvel Studios, it would eventually announce Daredevil: Born Again, with Cox and some others set to reprise their roles and returning Kingpin actor Vincent D’Onofrio claiming that Daredevil: Born Again would be more violent than Netflix’s version.

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The impending addition of the Netflix-era characters in Born Again, preceded by D’Onofrio’s inclusion in the DIsney+ series Echo at the start of the year, has triggered renewed interest in the character that’s set to headline this new street-level era. With this likely in mind, Marvel recently posted some promotional material giving newer fans an introduction to the character, with one interesting side effect. While the animated short, credited to Wild Comet Media, does a great job summarizing Daredevil’s origins and motivations in a neat, good-looking way, already existing fans of the character came away from the short with something a bit different: a yearning for the animated short to be developed into a full-length project. The top comment on the short simply reads, “We NEED a DD animated series like Batman Animated Series/Cape Crusader.”

While there’s nothing on the books at this time, the Man Without Fear isn’t a stranger to animated shows. Daredevil has made a few animated appearances ove the years, including on the interconnected universe of Spider-Man: The Animated Series that served to introduce fans to all sorts of less popular characters through crossovers with the ever-popular web crawler. However, at least two shows specifically centered on the hero have failed to take off in the past, likely in part due to the character’s relative obscurity for casual fans and the more serious tone and nature of his adventures, factors that would have been a major issue at the time.

Batman: The Animated Series, and its more recent (and less renowned) spiritual successor Batman: Caped Crusader are not only stellar examples of the medium, but are, more importantly, also stories about street-level crime and punishment that appeal to older audiences just as much as to kids. There’s also some precedent on offer in the form of a rumored Iron Fist animated project with a gender-swapped protagonist in the works at Marvel Studios, which will likely also draw its appeal from the exposure given to the character brand by Netflix’s show of the same name. However, it wouldn’t be smart to try and separate the success the character has seen in the mainstream from Cox’s embodiment of the character both in and out of the costume. Much of that appeal wouldn’t transfer over to an animated performance, even if Cox would likely be game to voice the lead.

There’s no denying that the quality and positive reception enjoyed by X-Men ‘97 foreshadows a lot of great things for the future of Marvel animation if the company takes the lessons learned from that show and applies them elsewhere, and there’s absolutely no reason why Daredevil can’t be one of those that benefits from a stellar animated adaptation after the character is brought into MCU canon properly. However, fans will have to wait and see how Daredevil: Born Again plays out before the potential for more projects can really be guessed at.

Daredevil: Born Again is set to premiere on Disney+ in March 2025.