We’ve been treated to a flurry of details around Marvel’s upcoming Disney Plus series, Daredevil: Born Again, with one development that’s sure to fix the biggest problem faced by MCU television shows.
For years, fans have taken umbrage with the short episodes of Marvel series, particularly when compared to the oft-bloated runtimes of their films (No Way Home needed an intermission). Shows like WandaVision, Agatha All Along and Secret Invasion were the subject of much concern among fans given the short runtime of their episodes.
Heck, I’d listen to Katherine Hahn sing in a witch costume for hours on end, but if recent rumors about Daredevil: Born Again are to be believed, the criminally short runtimes for Marvel shows might (hopefully) be a thing of the past.
According to the X page Marvel Updates, Marvel’s upcoming entry into its iteration of Daredevil will come complete with episodes that stretch to “around an hour,” a sizable jump up from the 30 to 40 minutes typically allocated for Disney Plus’ other staple shows.
This speculation around the hour-long episode runtime sent Marvel fans who have long been thirsting for more precious minutes into a tizzy, with one X user saying they “hope it’s an hour without intro and credits.”
Others said they “used to dream for times like this,” and said the expansion of episode runtimes was enough to “count me in.” Elsewhere, some fans thought the promise of longer episodes was too good to be true, saying “the runtime is definitely less” or that they’ll “believe it when I see it.”
If the speculation is true, that means we’ll be getting some nine hours’ worth of screentime with Born Again, since the upcoming season will encompass nine episodes. The unconfirmed reveal of the hour-long episodes was one of multiple details shared by Marvel Updates about Daredevil: Born Again. The page also said the upcoming series will include “several cameos” and a “funeral in the first episodes.”
The page also claimed that the test screenings for Born Again were “very positive”, and said the show has “more mature and gritty tones than the Netflix series,” which also starred Charlie Cox as the titular lawyer. This speculation around the series being gritty has flared up in the past, when Marvel Studios’ head of streaming Brad Winderbaum said Born Again will deliver “some of the most brutal action we’ve ever brought to the screen.”
In terms of the cameo detail, we already know that Ms. Marvel star Mohan Kapur will reprise his role as Yusuf Khan in Born Again, as one of multiple crossover cameos we’ve been promised as part of the series. Kapur will star in the show alongside already confirmed castmates like Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio, Jon Bernthal, Margarita Levieva, Michael Gandolfini, and Genneya Walton, among others.
We’re lucky to be getting rumored updates like this at all, since there was a time when Born Again felt like a distant dream following news that the series had been totally rehauled and built again from scratch. Thankfully, Marvel pulled itself together and we’ll soon see Matt Murdock on screens, with Daredevil: Born Again set to premiere on Disney Plus in March of next year as part of the MCU’s Phase Five.