Daredevil: Born Again Season 3 Will Bring Back Some Familiar Faces

Depending on which fan you ask, the street level side of the Marvel Universe has been arguably more popular than the bold superheroics of the Avengers and other super-groups since the early 2000s. The MCU’s first attempt at adapting the characters in that space was their partnership with Netflix, but it was relatively short-lived, with most of the shows only receiving two or three seasons before they were uniformly canceled back in 2018 and 2019. Now the MCU has been trying to pick up the slack with shows like Hawkeye, Echo, and the revival/sequel series Daredevil: Born Again.

From the moment Matt Murdock showed up to help Peter Parker with his legal troubles in Spider-Man: No Way Home, fans have been curious as to whether or not the rest of the Netflix characters would make their return as well. The trailers for season 2 of Daredevil: Born Again revealed that Krysten Ritter will be returning as Jessica Jones at some point in the season, but there’s still no way to know in what capacity or for how long. But now, set leaks for season 3 have spoiled a major development for the show and the larger MCU moving forward, and it’s one fans will certainly be very pleased with.

Over the weekend, Mike Colter and Finn Jones, who played Luke Cage and Iron Fist respectively in their Netflix adaptations, were spotted filming alongside Krysten Ritter for Born Again’s upcoming third season. This will be the first time the characters have all shared the screen with Daredevil since 2017’s The Defenders, and finally official confirmation that all of the Netflix shows, not just Daredevil, are canon in some capacity. There’s not much aside from their presence to be surmised about the upcoming reunion, but the ending of each respective show might give us some context on where they’ve been and where they’re going.

The third season of Jessica Jones ended with Jessica being forced to arrest her longtime best friend Trish Walker, after the latter started murdering criminals in an effort to become a vigilante, as a result of gaining superpowers in the second season and losing her mother to a serial murderer in the third. Iron Fist concluded with a second season that saw Danny Rand lose the power of the Iron Fist to his arch-rival Davos, only for it to be bestowed upon his girlfriend and martial arts expert Colleen Wing, with Danny stealing a pair of chi-infused pistols from former Iron Fist Orson Randall. Last but certainly not least, the series finale of Luke Cage shook up Harlem’s criminal underworld with the demise of longtime crime-boss Mariah Stokes-Dillard, who relinquished her nightclub (the hub of her criminal enterprise) to Luke Cage himself, who reluctantly decides to step up as the new “sheriff” of Harlem to avoid a looming gang conflict.

It’s hard to tell exactly what will remain canon from each of the Netflix shows, considering that Born Again has played a little fast and loose with the lore of the original Daredevil. Season 2 of the revival will probably reveal what Jessica has been up to when she finally makes her appearance, and based on the fact that Luke Cage is seen on set wearing the exact same suit he was in last time we saw him on Netflix, there’s a big chance he’s still trapped in his begrudging role as Harlem’s new kingpin; however, there’s no indication yet that Jessica Henwick will be returning as Colleen, which means that the entire status quo seen at the end of Iron Fist Season 2 is up in the air.

There’s also the question of whether or not we’ll continue to see the Defenders in the MCU moving forward. Daredevil: Born Again has been, without question, one of the most successful Marvel shows to release on Disney+, so it would make sense for Marvel Studios to want to capitalize on that success with spinoffs for those characters — this approach might work for characters like Iron Fist and Luke Cage, with decades of history between each other, but the lack of standalone material to build off of was felt heavily during the original run of Jessica Jones, a show based on a character created less than 30 years ago with only two solo titles to her name.

Considering the iconic romance between Jessica and Luke Cage in the comics (they married in 2006’s New Avengers Annual), and the brotherly camaraderie between Cage and Danny Rand (Power Man and Iron Fist made up the original Heroes for Hire team), maybe the best case scenario would be a spinoff of the three heroes together working in a capacity not all that unlike the classic Heroes for Hire ongoing series. The imagination could run rampant with where Marvel could take these beloved returning heroes next, but as of now, fans can celebrate in the knowledge that after seven years, the four main characters of the Marvel Netflix universe have finally come home.