Daredevil fans waiting for Matt Murdock to finally assemble can stop holding their breath. Charlie Cox said at MCM Comic Con Birmingham on Saturday that he is not in Avengers: Secret Wars.
Cox appeared alongside Daredevil: Born Again co-star Deborah Ann Woll for a Spotlight panel at the NEC Birmingham event, where a fan asked if Daredevil joins the Avengers in Secret Wars.
“No, I’m not going to be in it, no,” Cox answered, apologizing before adding, “And you should believe me now.”
The “believe me” part matters because reports have claimed otherwise for months.
Scooper Daniel Richtman said back in December that Daredevil would appear in Secret Wars, and in May, a Cox training post looked like confirmation for both Avengers movies.
Cox was never part of the Avengers: Doomsday cast announcements and told Jimmy Kimmel earlier this year that as far as he knows, he is not in the movie, which opens December 18.
So it sure sounds like the Man Without Fear sits out both halves of the Multiverse Saga finale.
Fans never believed his Spider-Man: Brand New Day denials
Cox knows why nobody takes his word for it. He spent the past year insisting he was not in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, he was telling the truth, and fans grinned at him anyway.
“It’s awful because I knew I wasn’t in it,” Cox said of the constant Spider-Man questions. “They were like, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah, sure, sure.’ And then I just know they walk away with this big grin on their face, and I just know your heart is going to break.”
Daredevil is indeed nowhere to be found in Brand New Day, which is rewriting the box office record books at north of $1.25 billion worldwide.
Jon Bernthal’s Punisher made the cut instead, described during the panel as practically the third lead of the movie with a big scene where he looked “cool as all hell.”
Cox joked about his co-star hogging the spotlight, responding, “I do, too,” to the panel host, who said, “I think it’s greedy, honestly.”
It was also noted that Bernthal and Tom Holland are best friends who did each other’s auditions years ago, with each crediting the other for landing his part, so it makes sense the two ended up sharing the screen.
The deleted Daredevil: Born Again singing and dancing scene
Cox also revealed that a musical Matt Murdock moment was cut from Born Again.
“There’s a scene in the first season of Born Again where there’s a dinner party and I come home to the apartment, and there’s a song playing, and I start singing and dancing,” he said.
If that sounds closer to the goofy She-Hulk version of Matt Murdock than the one at war with Wilson Fisk, there is a reason.
Per our insiders, the original version of Born Again was a disaster that Marvel scrapped and retooled to pull the show away from that lighter approach and back toward the Netflix series, which Kevin Feige and the trades later confirmed.
She-Hulk happens to be back in the news this week over its catastrophic test audiences going viral.
Asked about jumping between the tones of No Way Home and She-Hulk versus Born Again, Cox pointed to the comics.
“There’s plenty of issues or runs where Murdock is more lighthearted, more tongue in cheek, more levity in it. So it’s fun to play with those levels. It needs to be in the writing, obviously,” he said, calling the infamous She-Hulk walk of shame “an interesting thing to wrap my head around.”
Then came the line that says it all: “I think the tone of our show is where the character really lives.”
Should Daredevil: Born Again Season 3 fans worry?
Born Again Season 3 has already filmed, so the immediate future is locked in. What comes after is the question.
Disney just canceled Wonder Man despite having already greenlit Season 2, a reversal that followed the show’s dismal viewership. A renewal at Disney is no longer a guarantee.
Born Again has the same ratings problem. The series went 0-for-17 on Nielsen across its first two seasons, failing to chart a single episode in the streaming top ten.
Add it all up: Murdock shut out of Doomsday and Secret Wars, a flagship show Nielsen can’t find, and a studio that just proved a greenlight can be taken back.
Season 3 will arrive, but Marvel’s actions tell you exactly where Daredevil sits on the priority list.
