Echo might not be the finest hours of Marvel on TV, but there are many things it did right. The exploration of the titular character’s Indigenous heritage, for example, and the extensive use of ASL. Plus, we got a pleasing amount of Vincent D’Onofrio back in action as the one and only Wilson Fisk.
We just learned that Kingpin is being pitched as the street-level corner of the MCU’s answer to Thanos, and after watching Echo it’s easy to see why. Apart from looking a bit like the Mad Titan if he wasn’t purple, Fisk surprisingly seems to be almost as invincible as the Infinity Saga’s big bad. Memorably, Hawkeye ended with Maya Lopez shooting him at point-blank range in the head. In Echo, though, he’s wandering around just five months later, with only some facial scarring around his left eye to show for it.
While based on a similar miraculous survival in the comics, the version of events in the source material depicted Fisk as at least being temporarily blinded in both eyes. In the MCU, on the other hand, it’s unclear exactly what part of Fisk the bullet hit and, more importantly, how he was able to heal so quickly. What we’re left to wonder, then, especially given where the MCU is at the moment, is… could Kingpin be a mutant?
What if… Wilson Fisk is a secret mutant (or a super-soldier)?
First of all, just to clarify, no — Kingpin is not a mutant in the comics. This question was raised when Fisk tried to claim sanctuary on the mutant island of Krakoa in March 2023’s X-Men #20, but that was only because he’s currently married to a mutant, Typhoid Mary. Again, though, Echo makes clear that the physiognomy of Fisk in the MCU and in the comics differ, so it’s entirely possible Marvel Studios could make this bold change.
It wouldn’t be the first time this has happened, after all, as Ms. Marvel infamously retconned Kamala Khan into being a mutant instead of an Inhuman. Likewise, Avengers: Age of Ultron went the other way and made Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver no longer mutants. Echo itself even rewrites Maya’s power-set from top to bottom. It’s obvious that anything goes if it ties into Kevin Feige’s bigger plans, and with Kingpin being pitched as an Earthbound Thanos upping the stakes by making him a mutant, thereby tying him into the arrival of mutantkind across the board (see The Marvels, X-Men ’97, and Deadpool 3) would only be smart.
Then again, now that the Defenders Saga is 100% canon at last, Marvel runs the risk of running into major continuity issues if Kingpin is outed as a mutant in, say, Daredevil: Born Again. Fisk was strong and durable in the Netflix series, yes, but not superhumanly so. From Hawkeye onward, however, which also saw him hit by a car and blown up with an explosive arrow and yet come away without a scratch, he’s been taken to Terminator-like levels of hardiness. So what if Kingpin wasn’t born a mutant but made himself one?
As was floated by Redditor u/Identity_X, it’s possible that Fisk gained his newfound super-strength — and potentially even impenetrable skin — after taking a serum of Mutant Growth Hormone (MGH). In the comics, MGH is the biological chemical that mutants produce, but it can be extracted and isolated, turning it into a drug that bestows someone with temporary superpowers. The kicker is that Fisk is known to have used MGH as a young man in the comics. An MCU adaptation of the concept could even tie it into all the super-soldier serums that are knocking around Earth-616 (see The Falcon and the Winter Soldier).
In a world increasingly filled with superpowered heroes, like his own adoptive niece, it adds up that Kingpin would start relying on MGH to protect himself. Or maybe he’s just been a mutant all along and Fisk was just a bit of a late bloomer? Whatever the case, Marvel definitely needs to provide some kind of answer to how he survived that gunshot in Born Again.
