Dark superhero show premieres on Disney+

ALMOST seven years since the Netflix Daredevil series ended, comic-book fans are bracing themselves for the action crime drama to return — this time under Disney.

From 2015 to 2018, Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio brought to life the characters Matt Murdock/Daredevil and Wilson Fisk/Kingpin, respectively. Their few yet explosive clashes as a blind lawyer-slash-masked vigilante and as a crime boss-turned-mayor will be the center of the new show.

Actors and characters that appeared in the original series will also show up: Deborah Ann Woll as Karen, Elden Henson as Foggy, Ayelet Zurer as Fisk’s wife Vanessa, Wilson Bethel as Dex/Bullseye, and Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle/Punisher.

Following built-up anticipation over the past few years, Daredevil: Born Again will premiere today, March 4, on Disney+, with eight episodes in total. A new episode will be released each week.

The series’ newcomers are Margarita Levieva, Michael Gandolfini, Zabryna Guevara, Nikki M. James, and Jeremy Earl.

While there is a pressure to live up to what the original comics and the first few seasons of television had done before, this refreshed take will bring something new to the table, according to showrunner and executive producer Dario Scardapane.

“The thing about Daredevil is the mix of heart and muscle. They’re battling each other, so you have to find that kind of humanity through the action that’s trying to reset the bar for television,” Mr. Scardapane said at a press conference on Feb. 23 that was livestreamed from the United States.

“There’s really high octane action, moments of depth of character, and these two grinding at each other from across the city,” he added.

Even the trailer teases this dynamic, with Murdock and Fisk having a tense meeting at a diner and discussing how much time has passed since their last encounter.

On playing a blind lawyer by day and masked vigilante by night — now with traumas from events in the previous series — Mr. Cox said that the Daredevil has had to “rethink and refine his identity in a way that’s probably more profound than we’ve seen before.

“He ends up going down a path that is best described as a band aid that will have to be ripped off, slowly and painfully,” he said. “For fans of the original show, it’s the same Matt Murdock essentially, just influenced by his experiences.”

For Mr. D’Onofrio, whose character embodies “the kind of badness that makes crime mob stories so appealing to people,” Fisk’s struggle is similar to the main character’s, but of a different flavor.

“We’re trying to live in the daylight, the two of us. We have that in common. We’re broken men. There’s the metaphor of vampires trying to live in the daylight,” he explained.

Both Mr. Cox and Mr. D’Onofrio spoke of a “sense of trust” between them in the five or six scenes they share throughout the season.

The latter said: “You can’t put us together in the same scene a lot because it’s not as powerful, but it’s always so good every time we do it. It always marks the beginning of something or the end of something, or both sometimes. It’s intense.”

As for managing expectations of people who already love and followed the characters from comic book to screen, Mr. Cox said that there is nothing to worry about.

“There’s a thirst when we speak to fans, for that dark quality, that identity or fabric of the show that we’ve had in the past that we can’t necessarily articulate,” he said.

“It’s a worried desire if that quality is gonna be there, and I think it is.”

Daredevil: Born Again is out now on Disney+. — Brontë H. Lacsamana