Hello, heralds! It’s your BSO resident comic book expert here to break down the Easter Eggs in the new Disney Plus series Daredevil: Born Again and explain to yourom for the show. Daredevil has a rich history within Marvel and he’s seen two high-level and high-dollar productions before Disney even thought of relaunching the show, so there’s a lot of history the writers can use. I will do my best to help you understand what you might have missed, confirm what you already suspected, or explain something you may not have known since you haven’t read the comics. First, let me a few disclaimers out of the way. One can go up here since it’s not as important as the second one, bolded below, is that this won’t be an exhaustive list. I will undoubtedly miss some and you can point them out on Twitter/X, Facebook, and the comments. The best ones will even get a shout-out from us. Now to the most important one.
THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS. DO NOT READ PAST THIS POINT IF YOU WANT TO AVOID SPOILERS. LAST CHANCE.
With all of that said, let’s start with a pretty obvious one that doesn’t even require you to have watched a single show to understand but might have also skipped over some people’s radars and that’s the show’s title, Born Again. The character of Daredevil is deeply religious. Daredevil believes in forgiveness, but he’s way more attached to retribution. This is common within the Catholic base and Daredevil is a devout Catholic. One could argue that Daredevil likes retribution so much that Daredevil is his real persona and Matt Murdock is the alter-ego. But that’s not the only thing Born Again means.
Born Again also refers to the fact that the show is being revived on Disney Plus after it was canceled on Netflix. These characters are being given a second chance to take the roles back up and there’s an element of the showing being “born again” on a different network/service. There’s also a third element of the title that refers to Murdock taking the mantle of Daredevil back up after he had retired to focus on his law firm and his personal life. Daredevil was effectively gone. The people of New York could not rely upon him to save them, but now he must return. His return is him being “born again” into a darker version of the character following Foggy Nelson being killed by Bullseye. Had Daredevil not intervened, Karen Page was next and Bullseye had her dead to rights. Now that Daredevil is being sucked back in, the newer version of Daredevil may not be one criminals want to run into on the streets.
Episode 1: “Heaven’s Half-Hour” Easter Eggs —
- Josie’s Bar: This bar is frequented by Murdock, Nelson, Page, and McDuffie in the comics, now both shows and even the 2003 Ben Affleck film. It doesn’t get more Daredevil than Josie’s Bar.
- Netflix Gets Their Flowers: Both “Nelson, Murdock, and Page” and “Hogarth, Chao, & Benowitz” are featured in the opening ten minutes of this episode. Nelson, Murdock, and Page was the law firm name they all picked at the end of Season 3 on Netflix while Hogarth, Chao, & Benowitz are not only Foggy’s (RIP) former employers but also major players in Jessica Jones and in the comics.
- Fisk Running for Mayor: This is a direct call-back to where Echo left off and it’s also directly tied to Chip Zdarsky’s Devil’s Reign comic event and the Secret Empire major crossover event. Following Captain America becoming Hydra’s leader and putting an impenetrable dome of darkness over New York City, nobody really came to help the day-to-day individual as they were all taking on super villains and a brain-washed Cap, who is like an army unto himself. This allowed Fisk to step up and help the average New Yorker, making sure everyone had basic needs met and criminals weren’t stealing from folks who were just innocent in all of this. They remembered that later on down the line when he ran for mayor. As Marvel used to say “It’s all connected.”
- Heather Glenn and Kirsten McDuffie: Both of them are actually love interests of Matt from the comics. Kirsten originally figures out Matt is Daredevil and that leads to them having a relationship. He even moved to California with her until Purple Man’s kids wiped his memory from her head and Matt just… left. Heather Glenn is actually another love interest of his, but the way they wrote her out of the comics is just tragic. You’re welcome to look it up if you want to know more, but they did just about the worst thing you can do to a character without having her murdered by someone else. The less said the better.
- MCU has its own TV station: If you haven’t noticed by now, Spectrum News NY1 is quite popular in the MCU. Featured in at least nine different MCU productions, the network has become the go-to station for in-universe reporting.
- Bullseye’s Logo: He may not have been wearing the full garment he’s often adorned in the comics, but the logo was on plenty of his gear. You could see the Bullseye logo on his gloves, a purple mask — yes, it was purple — and even the optic on the sniper rifle he used to kill Foggy had his infamous logo on it. Speaking of optics.
Episode 2 — “Optics” Easter Eggs
- MCU References Galore in Neon: The episode opens to New York having elected Mayor of New York City and we see so many different references to past MCU productions. There’s a billboard for the fantastic Rogers: The Musical; there’s a Luke Cage call-back with the Harlem’s Paradise poster, and we even saw a little MCU philanthropy with the PymVanDyne Foundation having their own Happy New Year sign.
- Fisk Name Drops 3 Heroes: As Fisk was giving his celebratory speech talking about how New Yorkers need the law to take care of things and not vigilantes, he mentioned that the city doesn’t need skull-chested and gun-toting vigilantes or a guy who dresses up “in a spider outfit” or “a guy with devil horns” to protect them because New Yorkers can take care of themselves. This was a direct reference to Punisher, Spider-Man, and Daredevil. We know two of these characters are in the show, did Disney sneak in the third?
- White Tiger Lore and Amulets: The White Tiger is an incredibly rich character within the Marvel Comics street-level scene, but he’s not so familiar to non-comic readers unless they’ve seen the animated Spider-Man shows because the character has appeared in a few of those. Several different people have taken up the mantle of White Tiger, but Hector Ayala and his kin, Angela del Toro and Ava Ayala, are the most well-known. Hector was killed by the villain Mace and then dumped at the Daily Bugle for everyone to see as a message. Given the fact that actor Kamar de los Reyes died of complications due to cancer, I have a feeling they’re likely going to kill him off in this show but with the respect he deserves. He’s not likely to be shot unless Kamar really pushed for this option. They explain that the White Tiger gets his powers from the amulets.
- Muse Murals: The black and white murals we see throughout the show are being painted by the villain of the series, Muse. You’ll find out more about Muse as the show progresses and you’ll see why fans loved this new villain.
- Ben Urich’s NIece: We’re shown clips of reporter BB Urich throughout the show. This is the niece of Ben Urich, who was killed on the orders of Wilson Fisk in season one of the Netflix series.
- Punisher Skulls on Cops: It’s been a long time coming. It looks like Marvel is finally going to address the idea of cops wearing the Punisher skull while committing acts of violence when they’re supposed to protect the civilians, not commit crimes against them. This is something Frank has railed on in the past in the comics and it looks like Marvel is finally about to unload on them in a major way with this show.
That’s a pretty decent list of Easter Eggs for the first two episodes. I will keep churning these things out as the series progresses and we welcome your additions. Let us know what you noticed in the show and tell us what we missed. We know this isn’t a comprehensive list and there were tons of smaller references to the comics that we didn’t list. As always, keep it locked here to BSO for more on Daredevil: Born Again.
