'Daredevil: Born Again' And The Trolling Of The Theorists

Marvel

May 1

While the first season of Daredevil: Born Again has seen great success, its season finale has raised some questions about how Marvel engages with the members of its fanbase who want to theorize and build ideas about where a show’s story is going. Sometimes, the theorists have become too excited and are drawn to making wild predictions that do not come to pass. But other times, Marvel has been more than a little responsible, and Born Again is no different. So today, we’re going to look at the major theory that has dominated the first season of the show and explore more about the relationship between the MCU and theorists.

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again.

The Big Theory

So, what was the big theory this time around? It was that Foggy Nelson was still alive. Now that might seem surprising to many, given the overt, horrible manner of Foggy’s death. But, popular media has often shown us that the dead are never really gone through strange, scientific, or supernatural ways of reviving an individual. Marvel Comics has had this happen dozens, if not hundreds, of times, while this has occasionally transferred over to the MCU. However, in this specific instance, it was the result of a comic book storyline being linked to those shocking events at the start of Season 1.

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In the background of a few shots that depict Foggy in Episode 1, we can see an address number: 468. This number corresponds to Daredevil Issue #468, which is part of a comic book storyline where Foggy Nelson faked his death as part of the witness protection program. This easter egg inspired multiple videos and much speculation and theorycrafting within the fan community, because, as Matt himself narrowed in on in the final episodes of Season 1, there were unanswered questions about Foggy’s case that could have left this option open. If this were true, it would have substantially recontextualized Bullseye’s actions. There was also the fact that fans were told during the press junket for Born Again that Foggy would appear in both seasons of the show.

Instead, it seems likely that Season 2 will simply feature flashbacks, dreams, or visions of Foggy. The Season 1 finale gave no indication that Foggy was alive, by revealing that Deadshot was hired by Vanessa Fisk to kill Foggy. There was no attempt to fake his death, or capture him alive, she seems to have had every intention of having this man die to cover up a critical detail of the Fisk criminal empire’s business dealings. So in the end, this inclusion of such a specific storyline callback appears to have been a red herring that led theorists to a dead end.

Marvel’s History With Theorycrafting

This hasn’t been the first time the MCU has seen surprising, unlikely, or wild theories get cooked up by its fanbase. Perhaps most infamously, WandaVision had theories aplenty, like the idea that Wanda had reached into the Multiverse and transferred over the Fox-era Quicksilver from the X-Men universe, that Reed Richards would appear as a scientist who would aid Agent Wu and Monica Rambeau, and that Mephsito would appear to wreck some demonic havoc and set Wanda down the path of bringing her children into reality. The list goes on, and suffice to say, none of those predictions came true.

Some of that blame for people putting far too much hope in the show moving the MCU forward by leaps and bounds lies with Marvel itself. WandaVision was the first MCU show on Disney+, and initially, Marvel creatives like Feige stated that these shows would be, if not required viewing, then heavily endorsed as needing to be watched to understand what was happening in the films. This has since been reversed. Another part of the problem is that Marvel Comics has such a dense library of crazy stories and characters to draw from for these dedicated fans, and while leaks are common nowadays, some twists can remain hidden from a majority of people until a film or show finally debuts. A lot of left-field possibilities could absolutely happen in a Marvel project.

But there is also a history of Marvel trying to generate fan interest through suggestions of more things happening than the series will actually approach. For example, they cast Evan Peters in WandaVision, a transparent attempt to prompt Marvel fans to assume he was his version of Quicksilver from the Fox X-Men films. Instead, while he plays the role of “Quicksilver” in the show, he is revealed to be a normal man puppeted by Agatha Harkness. WandaVision also saw some teases for the character Wonder Man, though admittedly, those were probably because a project featuring him was in the works at the time. We are now finally getting that Wonder Man project this December, coincidentally. Finally, Agatha All Along had a gimmick where the show’s title changed every few weeks or months, without much explanation, before Marvel eventually alluded to the idea that Agatha herself was behind the name changes.

Was It On Purpose?

Given these various occurrences, then, did Marvel intentionally troll theorists by including the number 468 in scenes of Foggy dying? There is a chance that the answer is yes, but we should look on the side of no as well. In the no column, we have the simple but entirely possible occurrence that this was an accident. Some of WandaVision’s theorizing was the result of fans reading into often innocuous show dialogue or visual details, or getting the wrong message from more significant examples of both. Simply having that number in the background is ultimately plausible, and a mistake that Season 2 will probably try to avoid with its set design and location scouting. The number might also have served more as a warning sign for well-read Daredevil fans since it appears just before Foggy is shot, and was not intended to pull people in for anything more.

But on the other end, you have two elements. One, the aforementioned fact that Marvel likes to generate fan interest by seemingly purposefully suggesting there is more going on than what their show or film ultimately shows, regardless of the result, and two, their constant reuse of storyline titles to that end. Given Marvel’s large comic library, comic series, certain arcs, crossovers, and more have been the basis for many MCU films and shows over the years. The storyline with Foggy’s shock death and Matt investigating might share nothing at all with Born Again, but if it even slightly inspired the creatives who made the show, then its inclusion makes a degree of sense despite how far it leads an informed viewer off track. This sort of distant inspiration can be seen with projects like the Disney+ show Secret Invasion, which, beyond the appearance of Skrulls with a plot about the infiltration of Earth, ultimately shares next to nothing with the actual comic book storyline of the same name.

In the end, while it might not be on purpose, the result is still the same: fan theorists were tricked into following a series of events, through breadcrumbs left to entice them, and ended up inaccurately predicting Born Again’s big reveals. Marvel has to know what they are doing at a certain point, and hopefully, Season 2 will not feel the need to lead the theorists off on a wild goose chase yet again.

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