Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again Episodes 1 and 2.
Matt Murdock/Daredevil (Charlie Cox) is finally back to leading his own Marvel Cinematic Universe television series, with Daredevil: Born Again having premiered earlier this last week. The sequel series devotes plenty of attention to introducing its new characters and status quo, but does little to reintroduce Matt or other returning characters from the previous Daredevil series, with the creators seemingly assuming that most of the new show’s viewers will have at least some knowledge of either the major points from its predecessor’s story and/or the Daredevil comics. While this is likely true for the most part, it also means whichever few new or casual viewers there are could understandably be confused by some crucial aspects of the story and world, such as the nature of Matt’s superpowers. So, for those viewers and any others who may be curious, this is exactly what the Man Without Fear’s special abilities are and how they work.
The Blind Daredevil Has Superhuman Senses
In both the comic book and MCU continuities, Matt is blinded as a young child after heroically pushing an elderly neighbor out of the way of an oncoming truck, which was carrying hazardous materials. After losing his sight, he discovers that his remaining senses have become heightened to supernatural levels of sensitivity. He also develops what he refers to as a “radar sense”, which allows him to perceive the shapes and movements of his surroundings in 360 degrees. The earliest comics in the character’s more than 60-year history explain that he trained himself to use these abilities to function without his sight and eventually to fight crime as the superhero Daredevil.
During his first celebrated run on the ongoing Daredevil comic, writer and artist Frank Miller, whose work is credited with dramatically increasing Matt’s popularity and cementing him as one of Marvel’s central characters, introduced the character Stick, a fellow blind man with the same heightened senses, and added him into Matt’s backstory via a retcon, revealing that Stick provided Matt with his earliest instruction in controlling his powers, martial arts, and other semi-mystical skills. In a present-day appearance, Stick explains to Matt that all humans are capable of using their senses to the same degree of intensity but few learn to do so, and clarifies that the accident didn’t give Matt these abilities but merely shocked his system into using them. In a flashback in the first season of Daredevil, the television version of Stick (Scott Glenn) alludes to these things also being true in the MCU.
While the television series do not include the highly detailed descriptions of Matt’s sensory observations that his internal monologue often provides in comics, the intensity of his abilities seems to be relatively equal in both mediums. As most will likely expect, he relies most heavily on his enhanced hearing, which is sharp enough to allow him to easily identify others based on their voices and other bodily sounds and notice when most people are lying based on their heartbeats, among many other things. That said, he also uses his sense of smell regularly, especially to track targets of investigations while fighting crime, and occasionally also notices key details highlighted by his senses of touch and taste.
The exact nature of the radar sense has been subject to change throughout the character’s history. Early on, including throughout Miller’s tenure, Matt’s radar is portrayed as a distinct, additional ability, with him relying more on it in situations when his other senses are obscured, and vice versa. Later comics and other media adaptations, including Cox’s MCU appearances and the prior live action film in which Ben Affleck played Matt, have instead depicted the radar more like a culmination of his natural senses. Effectively, the information from his four other senses combines to form “images”, for lack of a better word.
The clarity of his radar sense consequently varies depending on Matt’s physical conditions, and those around him. The movie, for example, has him noting that, in conditions like heavy rain, the plethora of sounds created by the individual drops of water provides so much sensory information that, “it’s like I can see again,” with the film occasionally showing his point of view, which features images that are clear enough to be interpreted, although still shrouded in heavy shadows and colored a deep, dark blue. On the other hand, conditions such as extremely loud noises or heavy snow, which muffles sound, are often shown to make it extra difficult for him to perceive his surroundings correctly.
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Read Charlie Cox’s Foreword for Marvel’s New ‘Daredevil’ Comics Collection Ahead of ‘Born Again’ [Exclusive]
‘Daredevil: Born Again’ hits Disney+ on March 4.
‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Can Further Develop Matt’s Powers
Although both the original TV series and Born Again effectively highlight Matt’s unique perspective via specific choices in shot composition and sound editing, among other techniques, there is so far only one scene in either in which the viewer is directly shown what he “sees”. In Season 1, Episode 5, of Daredevil, Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson), a nurse Matt befriends who often tends to his wounds following his superhero missions, asks him to explain how his senses work. After Matt describes how his natural senses provide information that cumulatively forms a kind of “impressionistic painting,” Claire presses for more clarity, asking, “But what does that look like? What do you actually see?” Matt replies by simply saying, “A world on fire,” with the line accompanied by an eyeline match shot showing the yellowy orange, hazy view of Claire that he perceives.
In the comics, Stick’s training has allowed Matt to perform more overtly magical feats, including purifying his deceased lover, Elektra Natchios’ soul, with him doing so in several recent storylines that also heavily involve the character’s Catholic faith. And, like most major superheroes, he has temporarily acquired various other powers in particularly wild circumstances. But Cox’s Matt has never been shown to have these kinds of abilities, and despite being more tightly connected to the often outlandish MCU, Born Again has established a similarly grounded tone to that of the original series and will consequently probably not be featuring many, if any, of these more far-fetched sequences. That being said, it would be nice if the new series continues to explore new aspects of, and ways of depicting his supersenses, as the comics continuously do.
Daredevil: Born Again is available to stream on Disney+ in the U.S.
Daredevil: Born Again
- Release Date
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March 4, 2025
- Showrunner
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Chris Ord
- Writers
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Chris Ord
- Franchise(s)
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Daredevil, Marvel Cinematic Universe
