Spider-Man: No Way Home featured the highly anticipated return of Charlie Cox's Daredevil to the MCU, a treatment that his fellow Defenders have yet to receive. In 2015, Netflix released Daredevil season 1 following Matt Murdock's adventures as both lawyer and vigilante in the aftermath of the Battle of New York. Daredevil was the first release in a series of Netflix-exclusive shows featuring both popular and more obscure Marvel characters, culminating in an Avengers-style team-up in The Defenders mini-series.

At the time of release, it was widely assumed that all the Netflix shows were MCU canon, but with Marvel Studios venturing into TV themselves for Disney+, the canonicity of the Netflix shows is up in the air. Recently, however, Marvel Studios proved that they are willing to use some of the characters from Daredevil in their MCU productions, with Matt Murdock appearing in No Way Home and Vincent D'Onofrio reprising his role as Wilson Fisk (AKA The Kingpin) in Hawkeye. Unfortunately, it remains unclear whether this MCU invitation will be extended to characters from other Netflix shows like Jessica Jones and Luke Cage.

Related: Is Matt Murdock Already Daredevil In The MCU?

Daredevil being the only Netflix character, or at least the first to return to the MCU makes the most sense. Daredevil was the first Netflix show to be released and it is by far the most consistent when it comes to both quality and narrative. Additionally, Daredevil's MCU future is not hard to envision, due to the numerous ties he has to big MCU heroes like Spider-Man and Moon Knight—who is getting his own Disney+ series in 2022—allowing the character to appear in numerous projects down the line.

Matt Murdock hallway fight scene in Daredevil

Charlie Cox's portrayal of the man without fear immediately resonated with fans when the series premiered in April of 2015. Daredevil was the best-received character out of all of the Defenders, even after the release of five other Netflix Marvel shows featuring fan-favorite characters like Iron Fist and The Punisher. This could explain why Marvel Studios were in more of a rush to reintroduce Daredevil and not the other Netflix heroes. Moreover, Daredevil fits the quality standard the MCU is looking for when other shows like Iron Fist, somewhat infamously, do not.

But perhaps the main reason why Daredevil returned to the MCU before any of his fellow street-level crime fighters is how much the character fits in with the current MCU narrative. In the source material, Daredevil has strong ties to some of Marvel's biggest characters and teams, such as Spider-Man and the Avengers. This opens the door for Marvel Studios to finally adapt these relationships into the MCU, which is what audiences have been demanding for almost a decade. Based on Marvel's current slate, there are numerous Phase 4 movies and shows Charlie Cox can return in, including Moon Knight, She-Hulk, Echo, Spider-Man 4, and Avengers 5 to name a few.

Unfortunately, Netflix's other Defenders are not as easy to fold into the MCU. It is hard to imagine an authentic Punisher series under the Disney brand given the amount of violence associated with the character. The same goes for Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, both of which dealt with some very thematically mature challenges in their respective shows—not least of which was David Tennant's mind-controlling villain Kilgrave, who notoriously kept Jones as a sex slave. Even if adapting these characters into the MCU seems implausible, Daredevil's return in Spider-Man: No Way Home bodes well for their future, especially if the MCU decides to explore darker themes in projects like Moon Knight and Deadpool 3.

More: How Each Netflix Marvel Character Could Come Back To The MCU

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