Daredevil: Born Again's Spider-Man Reference Finally Sets Up The Kingpin Showdown The MCU Needs To Deliver

Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for Daredevil: Born AgainBig day: Daredevil: Born Again has finally acknowledged that Kingpin knows who Spider-Man is. It’s long been the case that MCU releases are at least partly overshadowed by what’s not in them rather than what is. Ever since Avengers: Endgame (and honestly, even before that point), the question of where the Avengers are gets more pressing with every escalating threat to Earth. Hell, even with the knowledge that the Avengers disbanded after Endgame, the individual heroes seemingly kicking back as top-tier villains maraud around doesn’t exactly make sense. Some day there might be an explanation, but for now it just looks like negligence.

That phenomenon becomes more difficult to accept when even more localized threats appear throughout the MCU timeline, and the question of New York and Spider-Man is particularly hard to suppress. Peter Parker’s neighborhood that he protects in his friendly manner is New York, and perhaps it’s Sam Raimi’s influence, but it feels like the Big Apple’s residents have a preference for the wall-crawler. So when a threat as big as Wilson Fisk running for mayor and vowing to end masked vigilantes in New York, you have to wonder why Spider-Man sits it out.

Daredevil: Born Again’s Spider-Man Reference Explained

In episode 2 of Daredevil: Born Again, the newly elected Mayor Wilson Fisk unveils his grand plan to take on vigilantes. He’s obviously dead-set against Daredevil because of their shared past, but even with Matt Murdock retired after Foggy Nelson’s death, Fisk still has his sights set on other heroes. His opening address focuses on the feeling of uneasiness in the city and calls out Murdock, as well as two other famous New York protectors:

…New Yorkers are tough. We know how to take care of ourselves. We don’t need a gun-toting vigilante who wears a skull on his chest, or a man who dresses in a spider outfit, or a guy who wears devil horns to save us.

As delightfully dismissive as that is of Spider-Man – rather fittingly for Kingpin, really – the briefness of the allusion and Spider-Man’s absence from the show may be deeper. Recently, Marvel’s head of streaming, TV, and animation, Brad Winderbaum spoke in an interview about the problem with Spider-Man appearing in live-action Marvel TV shows, when asked by Brandon Davis of Phase Hero:

You know, I’m not sure exactly what the rules are, but I think they have long-form television rights. We can do 30-minute animation.

Why Spider-Man Is One Of Daredevil’s Biggest Problems

Spider-Man is probably the most active masked vigilante in New York (especially with Daredevil retired), but they apparently can’t use him, so this is all we’ll get. But him not being remotely interested in rising crime in New York and Fisk being the mayor still seems very odd. Obviously, Tom Holland’s Peter Parker has a lot going on, but Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s ending pretty firmly establishes that he sacrifices his personal life to focus on heroism.

That means that despite his renewed focus on his home city, Spider-Man has effectively overseen a rise in crime, a rise in both masked vigilantes and masked villains (who Fisk doesn’t distinguish as any different), and deems the election of a notorious criminal to the office as mayor not worthy of checking in on. Unfortunately, the complication of rights seemingly means Spider-Man just has to be a bit of a distracting plothole, nodded to but not delivered upon.

Kingpin’s Spider-Man Reference Can Set Up The Best Villain Showdown

MCU's Wilson Fisk aka Kingpin with Marvel Comics' New York City behind him.

Kingpin is as much a Spider-man villain as a Daredevil one, and debuted in a Spider-Man comic (The Amazing Spider-Man #50 from July 1967). Having the two finally meet would be incredible, and while the Easter egg nod to him in Daredevil: Born Again may not seem like much, it does put us on a pathway to that showdown. It probably won’t be in Daredevil: Born Again season 2, but if Kingpin makes it and remains a force in New York, even if he’s not mayor by then, a face-off with Spider-Man is one of the most exciting prospects that remain in the MCU.

Vincent D’Onofrio has flirted with the Spider-Man question at various points, prompting lots of speculation that it’s a matter of when and not if the pair will meet. Most notably, at Fan Expo Philadelphia 2023, D’Onofrio reacted to a fan in a Spider-Man cosplay with his usual menace:

I’m gonna get you one day Spider-Man. There may be a sea of people between us right now… but I’m gonna get you motherf*cker.

That was taken rather too literally by over-enthusiastic MCU fans, when he was literally just playing around with the cosplayer. More tangibly, that same year at GalaxyCon, D’Onofrio revealed: “I have a strong feeling, and I’ve said this since I started the Netflix show, that eventually I’m going to kick Spider-Man’s ass.” Now that we know he knows Spider-Man exists, thanks to Daredevil: Born Again, maybe we can start getting a little more excited?