Daredevil’s weirdest story is too dark for the MCU

Daredevil: Born Again has finally hit the small screen, and it seems (for the most part) that people are pleased by the revival of the Man Without Fear.

In his Born Again review, our own Cameron Frew wrote that the new Marvel show was “bold, grown-up, and as teeth-clinchingly ferocious as you could ever hope,” going so far as to say it feels like a rebirth for the MCU. 

Cam’s hardly the only critic blinded by the chemical sting of Matt Murdock’s return. The series ranks fourth on our list of the best Marvel shows (truly the highest honor) and it scored an impressive 83% on Rotten Tomatoes. 

Yet for all the effusive praise Born Again has received, it got me thinking about the Daredevil comics –and I don’t mean the good ones written by Frank Miller. No, it made me think of the weirdest Daredevil story I’ve ever read, which saw Matt try to murder a baby. Yes, you read that right.

Matt Murdock throws a baby off a roof

Marvel Comics

The story is called Guardian Devil, and it’s a strange tale full of demons, death, and attempted infanticide. The basic premise is that after Matt endures a run of bad luck – Karen Page dumps him, Foggy gets accused of murder, and he loses his job – he turns to religion for comfort.

By sheer coincidence, Matt happens to run into a teenage girl who claims she’s somehow given birth to a baby girl without ever having had sex. Daredevil’s day only gets weirder from there when he’s confronted by a demon who claims this baby is, in fact, the future antichrist, destined to burn the world in sulphuric hellfire.

Matt being a superhero with plenty of magical friends does what you’d expect in this situation. He goes to see Doctor Strange to get to the bottom of this mystery… oh wait, no he doesn’t. Instead, he asks that well-known occultist Black Widow for help and the pair start fighting almost immediately. 

During the battle, Matt tries several times to kill the antichrist in her cradle, even going so far as to throw her off the roof of a building. Thankfully, Widow manages to save the child from becoming a pavement jam.

It’s at this point that Matt goes to speak to Doctor Strange (finally), and it turns out that Daredevil has been drugged with a mysterious chemical that Matt becomes hostile whenever someone tries to tell him that maybe, just maybe, the baby isn’t the devil.

Note: we presume this unknown compound contained stupid pills as well, because otherwise it doesn’t explain why Matt didn’t visit the Bleeker Street magician immediately.

Things only get dumber from here 

Marvel Comics

So, what happens with the baby? Well, it turns out that Matt’s misfortune was anything but a coincidence. It was, in fact, a plot of the Spider-Man villain Mysterio who – after learning he had an inoperable brain tumor – was attempting to drive Daredevil mad as his final terrible act. 

All of the demons and supernatural guff was Mysterio using illusions and drugs to trick Matt and his friends into believing in the paranormal. As the story comes to a close, Mysterio has Bullseye (it’s a Daredevil story, of course he makes an appearance) kidnap the child, and murder Karen Page. It’s all very sad, but Matt refuses to be broken, and knowing that he’s defeated, Mysterio chooses to shoot himself in the fishbowl rather than being doomed to a slow death in prison.

Honestly, if you think this story sounds stupid, then you don’t know the half of it. The whole thing is a mess of underbaked ideas, over the top drama (need we repeat Daredevil throws a baby off the roof), and characters acting like they’ve been kicked in the head by a horse. 

Why the MCU will never adapt it 

I know Guardian Devil has its defenders (not the Netflix ones, thankfully), and it does have its moments – the Daredevil Bullseye fight from Season 3 of the Netflix show was based on the final action set piece in Guardian Devil. Still, beyond serving as inspiration for better ideas, it’s clear why we’ll never see this story adapted into the MCU. 

Daredevil: Born Again might be a dark show, but no one wants to see Charlie Cox kick a baby off a skyscraper, and the overly religious themes seem at odds with the MCU’s version of the character. Sure, this incarnation of Matt is a man of faith, but he doesn’t seem the type to take a demon at his word (even if he was drugged). 

All in all Guardian Devil is just too ridiculous and dark a story to fit into the MCU and that’s probably for the best… although if they did do it I wouldn’t say no to seeing Jake Gyllenhaal getting another go in the fishbowl.

This is the second story about superheroes and infanticide, which isn’t a lot, I know, but it’s more than you think you’ll write when you go to journalism school. Anyway, if you want to read that, you can check what Invincible Season 3 Episode 6 did that no other superhero franchise would dare do if you’re after more Marvel news though we’ve got a guide to all the upcoming Marvel movies and shows and even done a ranking of every MCU movie.

For more on the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen though why not checkout our article explaining how to watch Daredevil: Born Again for free or our piece breaking down if you need to watch Netflix’s Daredevil before Daredevil: Born Again. Finally if the Marvel timeline is confusing you, give our feature revealing when Daredevil Born Again is set to ease your headache.