NFL
By: Rick O’Donnell
The MCU is getting bigger. Like it or not, Disney purchased Fox Studios all those years ago. They didn’t do it just for a cash grab. It was a way to bring beloved characters “home” with the rest of the MCU. Make no mistake about it, if they could bring more of them back, such as Spider-Man, they would. One of the reasons they purchased Fox was for X-Men, but we’ve barely gotten a whiff of them since.
Now that the trailer for Avengers: Doomsday has shown previous iterations of the X-Men and is the rumored hard reset for the MCU, the X-Men are more than likely on their way.
But what does that have to do with Daredevil: Born Again?
Not much. Despite some shared villains and a few crossover events, X-Men and Daredevil rarely share the same space in the comics. It’s unlikely that they’ll share much screen time in the future either. Yet, while watching Daredevil: Born Again, there are strong hints of similarities to X-Men that could prepare us for those future characters.
One of the biggest themes of X-Men is the anti-mutant storyline. There’s a fair-to-decent chance this won’t change once the “sacred timeline” in the MCU is set. Yet, Daredevil is still laying that groundwork despite the stories barely connecting. One of the biggest stories in DD: BA season 2 is the Anti-Vigilante Task Force, meant to mirror the current political climate; it could also be a precursor to the anti-mutant narrative regularly pushed throughout X-Men comics.
Yes, these stories are very political. Before anyone even whispers “woke” -ness of the story, save it. Let’s not forget that the X-Men first appeared back in the 60s at the height of the Civil Rights movement. The whole standoff between Charles Xavier and Magneto often mirrors the two approaches of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X. Xavier takes the nonviolent approach (King), and Magneto takes the “by any means necessary” (Malcom X). Maybe not initially, but the X-Men have had the long-standing theme of civil rights. If that’s “too woke” for you, maybe X-Men stories aren’t for you. Comics have always echoed society’s struggle for inclusion socially, politically, or economically. It’s the old cliche of “art imitating life.”
With Daredevil: Born Again, we’re seeing these themes play out with street-level vigilantes and those deemed “criminals”. Now that the series has already laid that groundwork, it wouldn’t take much to scale this up and bring X-Men into the fold. Whether Disney and the MCU will take the chance to play it out on the big screen is a mystery. The story and themes are there. Is Daredevil: Born Again easing us into a preview of the future?
