Daredevil: Born Again - Heaven's Half Hour

In a perfect world, the events of the first 10 minutes of Daredevil: Born Again would have taken place as part of another MCU movie or show. After the (already leaked) events that open the show, "Heaven's Half Hour" jumps a year forward to reintroduce our core characters and new supporting ones. Bringing us back to status quo, only to jump forward to a new reality, and then likely to return back to familiar ground in a couple of episodes does feel unnecessarily messy. If these events had actually occurred a year (or more) ago, and we were left to stew on them in real time, the lose and our new introduction would have had far more dramatic effect. However, despite the glut of content Marvel continues to pour out, and attempts to keep all events connected across the MCU, none of these other shows, or even films, have had the dramatic weight to contain these sequences.

All that said, "Heaven's Half Hour" works on many levels, although that's likely more an indictment of how other recent properties have been handled then a suggested return to form for the MCU. The opener of Daredevil: Born Again certainly recaptures the feel of the original Netflix show in a celebration with Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), Foggy (Elden Henson), and Karen (Deborah Ann Woll) that ends in an impressive Daredevil fight sequence (with the best version of the Daredevil costume we've seen yet) through a bar and up to the rooftop of the building. It also ends in tragedy and the "end" of Daredevil. Yeah, I'm not buying that either.

Jumping a year forward we glimpse the life of Matt Murdock without Daredevil in his life, working in a new firm with Kirsten McDuffie (Nikki M. James) and beginning a new romance with Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva). Characters and events from his past will pull on Matt over the course of the episode with the sentencing of Poindexter (Wilson Bethel) and the return of Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) who uses the Donald Trump road to victory downplaying his own criminal past, and showing a jaded populace willing to elect anyone "new" to fix their problems despite being completely unfit for the office, by promising to be a new law-and-order Mayor of New York City making the actions of all vigilantes illegal within the city.

Heading back to the shows origins, it looks like the new series will once again be focused on Murdock and Fisk, their separate stories, and climax where those overlap. We get a face-to-face between the pair with some idle threats traded and an unlucky short-term peace set. Knowing the show is called Daredevil: Born Again, I'm guessing we won't have to wait all that long before we see Matt Murdock back in the streets once more.

• Title: Daredevil: Born Again - Heaven's Half Hour
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