Daredevil’s MCU Connection Opens the Door for a Different Type of Thunderbolts

This post contains spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again season 2 episode 1.

Technically, Daredevil: Born Again takes place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk have both been in other MCU entries, and Punisher will be a big part of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. But thus far, the series has felt like it was part of the MCU in the same way the original Netflix series, which made reference to the existence of Thor and Hulk smashing Harlem, was part of the MCU.

That changed a little midway through Born Again‘s season 2 premiere, when a New York official takes a call about Mr. Charles, the mysterious CIA agent played by Matthew Lillard. At the end of the call, the official says, “Yes, Miss de Fontaine,” revealing that he has been talking to La Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, the CIA head played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Val has been in a variety of MCU entries, including Black Widow and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. But it’s her last appearance, in Thunderbolts*, that truly stands out because of the team’s role in the comics that inspired Born Again. Depending on how close the series wants to stick to those comics, Val’s appearance may lead the way for a different variation on the Thunderbolts.

Justice… Like Lightning

To MCU viewers, the Thunderbolts are a lovable group of misfits who overcame their personal traumas to become the New Avengers. To readers of Marvel Comics, the team is much, much more complicated.

The first version of the Thunderbolts arrived in 1997, after the apparent deaths of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. The team presented themselves as new heroes ready to fill the gap, but by the end of Thunderbolts #1, written by Kurt Busiek and penciled by Mark Bagley, they were revealed to be the Masters of Evil. Led by Baron Zemo, who took the identity of patriotic hero Citizen V, the Masters of Evil sought to get secret SHIELD files in order to take over the world. But as the series went on, some of the heroes liked playing good guy so much, that they eventually did in fact become good guys.

The team carried on in this way for about a decade, rotating through members and even getting Hawkeye as leader for a while, until the fall-out of the Civil War storyline in 2007 and especially the end of Secret Invasion in 2009. Over the course of those two major crossovers, Spider-Man nemesis Norman Osborn became a powerful political player and SHIELD enacted the Thunderbolts Initiative, a Suicide Squad-style program to turn villains into government agents. Once Osborn became the new head of SHIELD, he turned the Thunderbolts into the New Avengers, making Venom into Spider-Man, Bullseye into Daredevil, Moonstone into Ms. Marvel, etc.

Since that storyline, Thunderbolts teams have varied between two poles: they are always teams of villains or former villains, but sometimes they’re doing evil things under the auspices of being heroes and sometimes they’re bad guys trying to redeem themselves.

A Storm Brewing in the MCU

The MCU version in the movie is clearly more of the latter, but Daredevil: Born Again is pulling from a story in which they were the former.

The Mayor Fisk storyline comes from Devil’s Reign, in which Fisk uses his position as mayor to instigate martial law and outlaw all of New York’s vigilantes, which includes Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Moon Knight, etc. With that many heroes to deal with, Fisk needed heavy reinforcements. And so he assembled a Thunderbolt Unit of supercops, led (eventually, reluctantly) by John Walker a.k.a. U.S. Agent.

While Born Again will feature appearances by Jessica Jones and Jack Duquesne a.k.a. the Swordsman, the Anti-Vigilante Task Force directs most of its energy against regular people, which means that Fisk’s team of bully cops will be enough to do the job. But the involvement of Val does create the possibility of a more comics-accurate version of the team to appear in live action, either as villains forced to be heroes or villains trying to mend their ways.

Good Work for Bad Guys

Why does that matter? Because even though the MCU was once oft-mocked for its lack of good villains, the franchise has since introduced some all-timers: Loki, Killmonger, and, yes, Wilson Fisk. However, the more popular a villain becomes, the more we want to see them and sympathize with them, which means that there needs to be space for them to be heroic.

Marvel pulled off that arc with Loki, but it took two full seasons and the TVA to turn the God of Lies into the God of Stories. The Thunderbolts concept applied to the MCU could let some other baddies go through the same arc, giving space for guys like Vulture and Justin Hammer room to be more than people who fight the heroes.

If Val’s phone call in Born Again does indeed make space for a new version of the Thunderbolts, then perhaps some redemption will come from the machinations of Mayor Wilson Fisk.

Daredevil: Born Again streams new episodes every Tuesday at 9 p.m. on Disney+.

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