After years without confirmation, with the release of Echo, Marvel Studios has finally made the Defenders saga of TV shows canon to the all-encompassing Marvel Cinematic Universe. This means Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, and The Punisher — all the shows Marvel put out on Netflix back in the day —they're all officially part of the Sacred Timeline.
It seemed only a matter of time before Disney+ moved these Netflix shows into the MCU fold. The franchise has already featured Charlie Cox's Daredevil several times, and Daredevil villain Kingpin (Vincent D'Onofrio) has made appearances too, most recently in Echo.
Echo focused heavily on Fisk's relationship with Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox), whom he treats as his daughter. By the end of the series, Maya uses the power of her Choctaw ancestors to try and heal Fisk's mind of all his childhood trauma. By the time they get a chance to talk it over, Fisk is taken away.
What's up next for Fisk? Well, it seems like he's interested in running for mayor of New York, but other than that, we don't know. And Vincent D'Onofrio isn't letting anything slip. “That’s a good question, but I can’t answer that question. That question is boxed up in a lot of other stuff, and I can’t open that box,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
Although Maya tried to relieve his childhood trauma, D'Onofrio doesn't think Fisk's mentality has been altered. “I don’t think he’s changed; I think he’s enlightened,” he said. “I haven’t seen a lot of the episodes of Echo. So, in my mind, after everything goes down with Maya, he gets on a plane, and … by the end of that flight, he decides, ‘If I want to be all powerful, this is what I’m going to do.’ That’s the most I can tell you.”
Fisk will return once more in Daredevil: Born Again, the MCU's rebooted Daredevil series and the first since the original Netflix show came to a close. According to D'Onofrio, seeing the Defenders saga become MCU canon was never in doubt. “During our restart of all the creative on Daredevil: Born Again, all the creatives got together and said, ‘Look, this is how we’ve got to do it now,’” he explained.
"We are for sure only speaking about it in terms of being directly connected to the original Daredevil, and that’s a great thing. It brings in a lot of cool stories and all the collateral story that happened in those original three seasons."
The 18-episode Daredevil: Born Again series is expected to premiere in 2025. In the meantime, you can get your fix of Kingpin content in the original Daredevil series, which is now streaming on Disney+.
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