Being first clearly matters, after all Daredevil was always the ace in Netflix’s poker hand of shows starring superpowered New Yorkers like Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and The Defenders, but that still wasn’t enough to protect Matt Murdock from the series’ cancellation in late 2018.
Given its generally positive reception by audiences and critics, Daredevil getting the axe after three seasons was the biggest surprise when Netflix swiftly cancelled all of its Marvel properties, with the decision being mostly attributed to business logic derived from Disney’s own plans for Disney+. At the time a deal was struck between both parties stipulating that Disney could not touch Netflix’s cancelled characters, at least until two years later.
As it turns out, time flies pretty quickly in 2020 and starting November 29 those rights are now fully in Marvel Studios' hands (hence Disney) for them to use as they please. Daredevil fans had of course carefully kept track of this and prepared for it, resulting in a fully-fledged social media campaign under the hashtag #SaveDaredevil.
Even though the entire “Save Daredevil” campaign had been put in place soon after the show’s cancellation, the occasion marks the perfect opportunity to go over the groups’ core demands, namely: To have Disney revive Netflix’s vision for Daredevil; that the revived show must keep Charlie Cox in his Daredevil role, along with the rest of the original cast; and finally, preserving Daredevil’s rating for Mature audiences.
All those seem like fairly reasonable requests, especially for a TV series that was cancelled due to commercial reasons, yet they might also prevent Daredevil fans from broadening their scope to see the multiple complications the idea brings. For one, while Daredevil stood out from the rest of Netflix’s Marvel offerings, it still faced dwindling popularity and interest in social media towards its final season; on the other hand, even if Cox has said he’d be completely happy to come back as Matt Murdock, by now the show’s been gone for two years, thus making it difficult to have the entire cast do the same.
With Disney+ recently celebrating its first anniversary and with plenty of Marvel content like Wandavision, Loki and Hawkeye already lined up as exclusives on the platform, the company is surely hungry for another proven superhero. The question lies in whether a Daredevil cast in Netflix’s mold would actually fit through Disney’s doors.