Kingpin star says he’s the same character from ‘Daredevil’

Marvel Cinematic Universe canon has been a hot topic of conversation, discourse, debate and the occasional argument for the last few days, and a large part of the discussion is being spurred on by Hawkeye‘s finale.

Vincent D’Onofrio is back as Kingpin, and when you couple that with Kevin Feige’s recent admission that Charlie Cox will be the franchise’s Daredevil moving forward, you’d operate under the assumption that Netflix’s Daredevil has been welcomed back into the canonical fold.

However, no direct references have been made to D’Onofrio and Cox’s prior Marvel history, while the resolution of the mystery watch subplot would appear to indicate that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t part of mainline continuity, given that Agent 19 was played by Adrianne Palicki in the seven-season favorite.

When asked directly about whether or not he’s playing the exact same character, though, D’Onofrio told ScreenRant in no uncertain terms that was how he approached the role.

“They don’t exist separately. They’re the same person. I think from my point of view, like a lot of the Avengers stuff, a lot of the MCU stuff, they tried to connect as many dots to the original canon as they can, and some dots are just not possible to connect. And that’s what we’ve done with connecting to Daredevil and vice versa.”

If and when we get an interaction between D’Onofrio and Cox in the MCU, that should help clear things up pretty substantially, but for now we don’t have a definitive answer as to whether or not this is the same Kingpin fans grew to loathe and love in equal measure on Netflix.