We loved the first season of Daredevil: Born Again, Marvel’s hotly anticipated revival of the popular series in the Netflix Defenders universe, and its sophomore outing did not disappoint. The show just wrapped its critically acclaimed second season, with a third already well underway—all part of MCU’s Phase Six master plan.
(Some spoilers below, but we’ll give you a heads up before any major S2 reveals.)
From its inception, Daredevil: Born Again was built around the conflict between Matt Murdock/Daredevil (Charlie Cox) and Wilson Fisk/Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio), with Fisk attempting to leave his criminal past behind as the newly elected mayor of New York, and Murdock determined to abandon his vigilante activities as Daredevil to focus full time on his law practice.
Those intentions prove to be relatively short-lived, as personal tragedy and political machinations eventually drove both men down their familiar old paths. The S1 finale saw Fisk pulling a major power move by declaring martial law in New York City and outlawing any masked vigilante heroes. The second season takes place six months later and deals with the inevitable fallout of that momentous decision. Murdock and his vigilante allies have been forced underground, while Fisk imposes multiple harsh authoritarian measures on the city to cement his power.
S1 proved Born Again to be an entertaining, character-driven series that felt very much a part of its Netflix predecessor while still having its own distinctive feel. Much of that was due to cinematographer Hillary Fyfe Spera, working in conjunction with the broader production team to bring Born Again’s distinctive aesthetic to vivid life. (You can read our 2025 interview with Fyfe Spera here.) Fyfe Spera and her team returned for S2, giving us a welcome continuity to the series’ overall design.
For the first season’s overall look, Fyfe Spera drew much of her inspiration from 1970s films like Taxi Driver, The French Connection, The Conversation, and Klute. For the second, she cites Michael Mann’s 1981 film Thief as a major inspiration. “It’s set in Chicago as opposed to New York, but the texture of that film, the grit of it, the use of darkness and contrast, was a really good reference for us,” Fyfe Spera told Ars. “Our goal was to take where the story left off [in S1] and evolve it, and that lent itself to getting a bit darker and grittier.”
