By Zach Johnson
It turns out Matt Murdock’s biggest battle may be internal.
In Marvel Television’s Daredevil: Born Again, Matt (Charlie Cox) is tormented over the death of his best friend and business partner, Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson). In the year since Foggy’s murder, Matt has left his life as a masked vigilante behind to focus on his career and a relationship with therapist Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva). Trouble is, trouble has a way of finding him. And, with crime on the rise, he can’t stay out of the fight.
Then again, there’s a part of Matt that is looking for a fight.
To bring the series’ visceral and vivid action sequences to life, Marvel turned to Philip J. Silvera, who previously served as the stunt and fight coordinator for Daredevil Seasons 1–2.
“The action always comes from a place of emotion,” Silvera tells D23. “In Season 1 of Daredevil, you were getting to know Matt for the first time, and you saw his will and his determination to save this young boy no matter what. In Season 2, with the staircase scene, you saw his ‘descent into hell.’ Jon Bernthal’s character, Punisher, hit him with that juxtaposition of, ‘You’re one bad day away from being me.’ The opening scene of this show is that bad day. Matt goes into such a blind rage that all the pain he’s experiencing pushes him to a point where he crosses his own line, and it just keeps getting darker as we go on.”
As a devout Catholic, Matt has long struggled to reconcile his faith with his violent tendencies. But while he was once able to exercise restraint, it has become increasingly difficult for him to pull his punches—literally and figuratively. As such, Silvera needed to modify Daredevil’s fighting style to match his new and uncharacteristically wanton attitude.
“We know he pays homage to his father, who was a boxer, but he was trained by Sticks, so he has a lot of different martial arts in his tool belt,” Silvera says, referencing Matt’s mentor, who was played by Scott Glenn in the original Daredevil series. “Usually when he gets fatigued, he relies more on the boxing. No matter what, it comes from an emotional place.”
Daredevil’s fighting style is also more acrobatic and dynamic than ever before, drawing inspiration from the character’s comic book origins. “We’re doing a lot of performance capture to give him more movement, and I think it adds so much texture to who Daredevil is,” Silvera says. “We’re getting to show the audience things they never really got to see before. We had implied a lot, but now they get to see more of it—the true Marvel touch.”
Of course, Daredevil fights differently than his adversaries—both mentally and physically. “You have Vincent D’Onofrio’s character, Wilson Fisk: He’s a very calm, collected person, but when he cuts loose, it’s complete rage. It’s almost like a silverback gorilla fighting,” Silvera says. “Jon Bernthal’s character, Punisher, is a little more tactical. He cares less about how he takes care of his opponents. And in the comic books, Daredevil and Bullseye—Wilson Bethel’s character—have a very similar technique, but one is more lethal then the other. When you see the staircase sequence in the first episode, you see the lethal vs. non-lethal fighting at a long-range distance. Bullseye has such a style of dismissiveness in his throws, but at the same time, he’s so accurate with them. Daredevil has this brute nature, too, so seeing them do that dance was such an iconic moment for the fans and for myself.”
And then there’s the most recently introduced villain, Muse (Hunter Doohan).
“We wanted to lean into the fact that we had an artist in front of us, so he had to move like an artist,” Silvera says. “We played and we toyed with the idea that he was more like a fencer doing brush strokes with his knife. And then you play the psychology of the characters within the sequences. That’s the fun part of designing all these characters; they have such a specific point of view on trauma, and I think that’s what makes them different.”
As much as possible, the actors are trained to perform their own stunts, according to Silvera, who serves as a stunt coordinator and second unit director with Dave Macomber. “It’s quite a bit of work for Charlie, Vincent, Jon, and Wilson,” Silvera tells D23. “They’re on set 24/7. When they’re not on set, we will try to meet them during lunch and spend an hour or two with them. If they’re in between setups, our stunt team is on standby. I’ve had the privilege of working with Charlie, Vincent, and Jon before, so I know what fits them best. We won’t over-design something that is outside of their capabilities. We’ll push them in the right direction, but we always make sure to take into account what they can do and how they like to work. They all put in that extra work with us as much as they possibly can.”
Stream new episodes of Daredevil: Born Again Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT, only on Disney+.