Could Bullseye Lead The Thunderbolts? “Keep Your Fingers Crossed.”
The lovable villain is on to bigger and better things after Daredevil: Born Again Season 2.
Bullseye (Wilson Bethel) would have happily laid down his life to atone for his many sins in the latest season of Daredevil: Born Again. After successfully assassinating Vanessa Fisk (Ayelet Zuror), the vigilante otherwise known as Benjamin Poindexter is more than ready to retire — and he comes close to it multiple times in Season 2. That he actually lives to fight another day is a surprise in itself, but Daredevil might also be setting up a far more interesting second act for the villain.
Spoilers ahead for Daredevil: Born Again.
The long-coming battle between Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) and Mayor Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) ends with neither side truly happy. After outing himself as the Man Without Fear, Daredevil, Matt is imprisoned for his crimes. Fisk is likewise exiled from the city, leaving New York without both its fiercest defender and its most obsessive leader. Only Poindexter seems satisfied with the way the chips have landed: at the end of the Season 2 finale, he’s seen heading out of town with Mr. Charles (Matthew Lillard), a shady CIA operative with a fascination with enhanced individuals.
Mr. Charles whisks Bullseye off to places unknown at the end of Born Again Season 2.
As we learned in earlier episodes, Mr. Charles works directly under CIA director Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and has been recruiting heroes — like Mike Colter’s Luke Cage — on clandestine overseas missions. Bullseye will likely be his next pet project, seeing as Luke returns home to his family in the Born Again finale. But is there a chance that, instead of becoming an anti-hero for hire, Bullseye will lead his own shady task force? Like, say, a new incarnation of the Thunderbolts?
“I will tell you that I would love to do something like that,” Bethel tells Inverse. “So keep your fingers crossed. I’ll keep mine crossed. Let’s see what happens.”
Bullseye has served as a member of the Thunderbolts before, though not always of his own free will. In the comics, he joined the team during the events of Civil War, but wasn’t exactly interested in their fight against heroes like Spider-Man. He also wasn’t much of a team player, either: his impulse to murder made him the last person his teammates were willing to trust. He was notably chained in a cell between missions to give the rest of the Thunderbolts peace of mind.
That said, the version of Bullseye we get in Marvel’s Cinematic Universe is a great deal tamer and, perversely, more psychologically sound than his comics counterpart. Though he works better alone, he teams up effectively enough with Daredevil when their interests align. Maybe it’s a sign that he can play better with others than the Bullseye of the comics ever could. Bethel is certainly down to find out — but Daredevil: Born Again first has to get over its aversion to the wider MCU before Bullseye can join another team.
Bullseye proved he can be a team player this season. Could a genuine team-up be next?
This season of Daredevil arguably has the biggest repercussions for the franchise and other New York-based heroes. It also comes after the events of Thunderbolts, which pitched New York City into another catastrophic event. But Born Again Season 2 doesn’t feel like it shares a city with Thunderbolts or any other Marvel movie. According to Bethel, that’s just how showrunner Dario Scardapane likes it.
“Dario talks a lot about how, even though we are technically part of the larger MCU now, this street-level world still sort of occupies its own corner of the ecosystem,” Bethel explains. “I do think that is very much to the benefit of the show as it continues to evolve.”
Still, Bethel admits it’d be “very fun to get woven into the larger world” at some point. Bullseye’s choice to leave New York with Mr. Charles opens up a trove of possibilities for his character, so Bethel is willing to leave things on a coy “We’ll see.”
