How Charlie Cox’s Daredevil Shows up in ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’

Hot on the heels of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin of Crime making the leap from Marvel’s Netflix shows, to Disney+’s Hawkeye on this past week’s episode, we officially have another expat from Netflix making his way back into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Spoilers past this point, but after months — and maybe years — of rumors, Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil, officially made an appearance on screen in Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Though fans of Netflix’s Daredevil might have wanted a little something more after the series was unceremoniously canceled after three seasons in November of 2018, it’s still extremely exciting to see Cox back on screen — and mixing it up with Spider-Man, no less, a character DD often hangs out with in the comics, but never has in the MCU.

Murdock actually appears relatively early in the two and a half hour long film, picking up on the cliffhanger from 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home. At the end of that movie, and as revisited at the beginning of No Way Home, Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) sent doctored footage of his own death to rogue reporter J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) framing Spider-Man (Tom Holland). Not only that, he revealed that Spidey’s identity is Peter Parker to the whole world, throwing his life upside down.

The immediate blow-back? Peter and his friends, MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon), as well as his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) are brought in for questioning by the police, working with the Department of Damage Control. Peter gets sent free, though the news helicopters, fans and detractors won’t leave him alone.

That’s when we get to re-meet Matt Murdock and his distinctive forearms, inside Aunt May’s apartment, as he offers advice to Peter, May and Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau). Though there’s no fanfare, or familiar Daredevil theme music, he does get a featured moment as he steps into frame, his upper half cropped out — and then sits down, revealing it’s Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock. [Cue the crowd going wild.] It’s the same Murdock we know and love from Netflix, complete with his red glasses, cane, and slightly ill-fitting suit. As the trio try to get information from Murdock on how to get out of this mess, he notes that, “Peter, you may have dodged your legal troubles, but things will get much worse. There is still a court of public opinion.”

That’s when a brick with a note tied to it crashes through the window, and Matt catches it from behind his back with one hand. While outside someone shouts, “Mysterio forever!” Peter looks on, stunned that his blind lawyer pulled off an impossible stunt.

“How did you just do that?” asks the shocked Peter, as he slowly takes the brick.

“I’m a really good lawyer,” quips back Murdock.

That’s pretty much it for the scene, and Cox doesn’t pop up at any other point in the movie, despite the multitudes of villains who end up attacking New York throughout the run-time. But beyond being a fun visit with our favorite man without fear, it’s also a pretty big deal for a number of reasons. There’s the fact that Daredevil wasn’t just on Netflix, it was produced by Marvel Television — a different division than Marvel Studios, which produces the movies, and now the Disney+ shows. Marvel Television is now mostly defunct, while Studios takes the lead. And with the introduction of Kingpin and Daredevil, it’s clear they’re cherry-picking fan-favorite performers who have helped iconize these characters on screen.

But arguably the bigger deal is that Matt is already, clearly Daredevil, despite the lack of costume. The Netflix shows always took place in the MCU, so that’s not a huge deal on its own. But an open question has been how much Marvel Studios wants to recognize what Marvel Television did before. In this case, we’re not only getting the same actor playing Daredevil, we’re also not wholesale rebooting his origin story… So when he does inevitably show up again, maybe towards the end of Hawkeye, almost definitely in the upcoming Echo series on Disney+, and quite possibly in Disney+’s upcoming She-Hulk (they’re both lawyers, after all), we won’t have to go through the same journey to becoming a hero, again. He can just be Daredevil, and we can just get to the fun stuff.

Will this lead down the road to a Daredevil Season 4? Maybe. There have definitely been plenty of rumors in that direction. But for now, we can just be happy that Marvel’s really good lawyer is back where he belongs.

Where to watch Daredevil