Ready to be Born Again?
You already know how this goes by now. The Netflix arm of the Marvel Cinematic Universe may not be the main MCU--no one is fighting Thanos or dealing with half the population of the world disappearing in the middle of the afternoon--but it still features plenty of hidden references and nods to the comic book source material for us to unearth.
This season was based heavily on the iconic Born Again story of the Daredevil comics by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli, which was originally published across Daredevil #227 through #233 back in 1986. Though Born Again is perhaps less famous than Miller and Mazzucchelli's other work from around that time--Batman: Year One--it fulfills basically the same function. The idea behind Born Again was to strip Daredevil down to his most basic components and see what stuck by throwing Matt Murdock through a brutal ringer of betrayal and death over and over again until he either broke entirely or, hopefully, emerged a hero.
Though Season 3 is anything but a shot-for-shot recreation of Born Again, it draws pretty heavily from both the themes and the plot elements, kicking not only Matt but Karen Page and Foggy Nelson through the proverbial fire as they work (sometimes futilely) to take down the recently released Wilson Fisk.
That said, Daredevil Season 3 is packed with Easter Eggs from all over the Daredevil canon, both vintage and modern. We compiled a list of them here for you to test your reference-scouting skills. Obviously, there are spoilers from here on out for the entire season, so please proceed with caution.
1. The Prison Riot
Season 3 maintains Daredevil's long running tradition of absolutely brutal "hallway fights," and even ups the ante a bit. This time Matt wasn't stuck in a den of thieves or punching his way through a bunch of gangsters--he was literally locked in a prison. And he was stuck there as Matt Murdock, not Daredevil--you know, just to really spice things up.
However, for as crazy as Matt trying to break himself out of prison may be, his comic book counterpart has some experience in the area. During the "Devil In Cell Block D" story arc of Ed Brubaker and David Aja's run, Matt is forced to fight his way out of Rikers--though not as a lawyer visiting his client at the wrong time, as an inmate himself.
2. Sister Maggie
Though Season 3 isn't a total adaptation of any one Daredevil story, it borrows pretty heavily from the famous "Born Again" arc, which introduced Sister Maggie, a nun who just so happened to be Matt's mother. Though Maggie's cinematic story isn't exactly the same as her "Born Again" self, the ultimate reveal is still the same: Matt's mom has been around this whole time, and while that means Matt has someone new in his corner, that's still a pretty traumatic revelation to have.
3. Felix Manning
While the majority of Season 3's side characters are inventions specifically for the show, Fisk's "fixer," Felix Manning, actually is from the comics--sort of. Manning was an only briefly named part of Daredevil #230 back in the '80s. He commissioned Melvin Potter for a duplicate Daredevil suit and later paid with his life. He died literally one issue later, at Bullseye's hand. Cinematic Felix has a considerably expanded role, to be sure, but he owes at least his name to that short lived cameo.
4. Bullseye and Baseball
Ben Poindexter's childhood obsession with baseball wasn't an incidental choice. Though comic book Bullseye's backstory is left pretty intentionally vague, one of the more readily accepted versions of the story, as told in the aptly named "Bullseye: Greatest Hits" mini series, involves him taking a shot at becoming a major league pitcher before turning to his life as an assassin. Of course, being a massive sociopath, he only pitched like 3 games before he got too "bored" and threw a fastball at a batter's head, killing him. So much for that career path.
And if that weren't enough, you'd be hard pressed to miss the target logo on young Dex's baseball cap during one of the flashback sequences.
5. Melvin Potter
This isn't the first time we've met Melvin in the Netflix universe, but just in case you needed a refresher: Melvin is a troubled ex-con who fabricated the Daredevil costume for both Matt (at Matt's behest) and Dex (at Fisk's). This lines up with Melvin's role in the comics as well, where he runs a costume shop as a reformed villain who used to be known as the Gladiator. Melvin's mental illness makes him incredibly susceptible to outside influence, so the manipulation that happens here in Season 3 is something that features pretty regularly in print as well.
This season also put Melvin in a shirt designed to mirror his classic comic book costume.
6. Bullseye as Daredevil
Bullseye suiting up in the Daredevil costume isn't an invention for the Netflix MCU by any means. It's actually a major part of one of Bullseye's earlier stories in the '90s, when Matt Murdock temporarily left New York, which gave Bullseye an opportunity to swoop in and take over the mantle. He actually began believing he was the real Daredevil before Matt returned and put an end to things.
7. Fisk and Matt's Secret
One of Season 3's major moments is the revelation that Fisk has deduced who Daredevil actually is behind the mask, which just so happens to be a major moment in the Born Again story as well. In fact, Fisk has known who Matt actually is for quite some time in the comics--though he was made to forget recently after Matt reclaimed his secret identity last year, in a move that erased the knowledge from everyone's memories simultaneously.
8. Dex vs. Karen
Dex's attempt on Karen's life was more than just a brutal boiling point for a sociopathic murderer. It was a direct nod to Karen's fate over in the comics, where, tragically, Bullseye was considerably more successful. He murdered Karen while trying to kidnap a baby from Saint Maggie's Cathedral in the late '90s, so we can count ourselves lucky that the show's version of the cathedral fight didn't have an even higher body count.
9. Criminal Vanessa
Perhaps one of the most surprising character turns of the season was Vanessa's sudden inclination for the darker side of Fisk's life--something he had, in the past, tried to keep her shielded from. Vanessa's comic book counterpart has had a pretty strange history (seriously, at one point she was an amnesiac who lived in the sewers of New York with mutants--just don't worry too much about it) but she's notable for being almost as cold blooded as her husband. In the Fisk family, innocent bystanders absolutely do not exist, so Vanessa's live action heel turn is not a surprise. She's gone toe-to-toe with Daredevil herself in the name of preserving her family's name.
10. Karen's drug problem
During the Karen-focused episode 10, we learn that prior to moving to New York, Karen had been a relatively troubled kid with a drug problem. Karen's substance abuse is actually a major component of the "Born Again" story, where she sells out Matt Murdock's secret identity attempting to buy herself a supply of heroin.
11. "We call him Kingpin."
Wilson Fisk has been a part of Netflix's Daredevil from the very beginning, and it's never been a secret as to who he actually is or which supervillain he was based on--but he's never been called out directly until now. The secret cabal of FBI agents under his thumb avoid saying his name altogether, and instead refer to him only as "Kingpin."
12. Kingpin's White Suit and Rose
It's taken three seasons for Vincent D'onofrio to don Wilson Fisk's iconic comic book "costume," his white suit--most memorably with a red rose in the lapel--but we finally got it. Kingpin has been rocking his classic look over on the publishing side of things since his debut in 1967 with only slight variations in style and design. Why mess with perfection?
13. Brett Mahoney
Officer Brett Mahoney may seem like he's more likely to have come from a crime procedural than a superhero comic, but surprisingly, he does have his very own four-color counterpart. Introduced back in 2007, Officer Mahoney has even teamed up with the likes of Wolverine and Storm to solve various superhero-adjacent cases in Marvel's NYC--much like he does in the Netflix MCU currently, albeit with a totally different roster of heroes.
14. Matt Manipulating Bullseye
If you couldn't already tell, the relationship between Daredevil and Bullseye is a messy one, to say the least, and it's something that causes Matt to act a bit less-than-superheroic on a pretty regular basis. We get a slightly toned down version of Matt being pushed too far this season with his willingness to push an already deeply troubled Dex over the edge to aim him at Fisk--a move that really only helps Matt cause a bit more chaos while he executes his plan. Or maybe Matt was hoping that Dex would actually kill Fisk so that he wouldn't have to.
Over in the comics, Matt and Bullseye's toxic back-and-forth could be seen most clearly when Matt repeatedly snuck into Bullseye's hospital cell after his back was broken, forcing him to play a two man game of Russian Roulette (no really) while Bullseye was helpless to escape. It got pretty dark.
15. Bullseye Paralyzed
In the Season 3 finale, Kingpin brutally drives Dex onto a corner, breaking his spine and rendering him paralyzed--a problem he attempts to then fix with some experimental surgery in the last shot of the show. This moment is actually less brutal than its comics double, where Bullseye is paralyzed as a result of Matt throwing him off a telephone wire. Live action Matt's hands may be a bit cleaner this time around but the end result is still the same.
16. A man without fear.
During Matt's eulogy for Father Lantom, he says that the priest's influence taught him how to be a "man without fear" and, hey, that just so happens to be Daredevil's official tagline.
17. More stable than Jessica Jones
As Matt, Foggy and Karen assess the damage and figure out what they're next steps are, Foggy pitches the idea of Karen coming back to work with them as Nelson, Murdock & Page, where Karen would act as a sort of in house investigator for the firm. Matt explains that she's "more stable than Jessica Jones," a nod to his Defenders teammate, PI Jessica Jones, who is notorious for her less-than-cheery attitude and alcohol problem.
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