Daredevil: Born Again Recast One Of The Show’s Best Characters
Vanessa Fisk was recast for Daredevil: Born Again and is now being portrayed by Sandrine Holt.
For a while there, it looked like Daredevil and other Netflix-era Marvel shows were a black sheep to Disney, and the company seemed reluctant to bring those characters into Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. After the arrival of Disney+, the studio seemed hopeful to capture the magic of those original shows with new programming, but fans still clamored for the return of “the man with no fear” and the rest of his colorful cast of supporting characters. Now, The Hollywood Reporter reports that Daredevil: Born Again will bring back most of your favorite actors from the original show, but Vanessa Fisk has been recast and will now be played by Sandrine Holt, whereas in the Netflix show, the role was played by Ayelet Zurer.
No explicit reason was given for Zurer not returning for Daredevil: Born Again. She doesn’t seem to have much on her plate when it comes to upcoming film or television projects, especially compared to some of her Daredevil castmates, such as Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio. Then again, considering this show will run for at least 18 episodes in the first season and that her character may have to come back for future seasons and cameos in other shows and even movies, it’s entirely possible she didn’t want to deal with all of the stress that comes from being in the MCU.
Speaking of which, nobody involved with the production, including Daredevil actor Charlie Cox, knows whether Daredevil: Born Again is meant to be a continuation of what came before with the Netflix show or if this is meant to be a new version of the character (a variant, if you will) for the newer streaming platform. Ironically enough, this hearkens back to old fan debates about whether early Marvel TV shows (including popular programs like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Jessica Jones) were officially part of the MCU or not, especially because the shows were often coy about making references to the movies and the movies rarely made any references to the shows.
Regardless of the official Disney position on this, the fact that Charlie Cox has already popped up as Matt Murdock in Spider-Man: Far From Home and as both Murdock and Daredevil in She-Hulk: Attorney At Law shows how important the studio now considers these characters.
In the original Netflix show, Vanessa Fisk was a very important character because she helped show the human side of Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin of Crime. The last we saw this character, she was forcibly separated from her husband after his defeat at Daredevil’s hands and subsequent arrest by the police. If Daredevil: Born Again does end up being a continuation of the original Netflix series, it will be interesting to see whether the Kingpin is still in jail and what Vanessa Fisk did to protect her husband’s empire while he was behind bars.
We won’t know exactly what Vanessa Fisk and the rest of the characters are up to until Daredevil: Born Again drops on Disney+ sometime in spring 2024. Since this will be the first time that the Daredevil universe is definitively part of the MCU, it will be interesting to see how much (if at all) these more street-level heroes and villains are affected by the MCU’s regular bouts of world-threatening events and multiversal matchups. But if they end up putting the Kingpin’s face on a MODOK body, it will be safe to say that Marvel has finally jumped the shark.
