Charlie Cox is reportedly reprising the role of Daredevil in Marvel and Sony's Spider-Man 3 - but the MCU may not be bringing back the version from Netflix's Defenders shows. Back in 2013, Marvel Entertainment and Netflix entered into an unprecedented partnership to bring some of Marvel's street-level heroes to the streaming service. Daredevil was the first of these, and undeniably the best. And then, in 2018, the relationship between Marvel and Netflix began to fall apart. Even Daredevil was officially cancelled in November 2018, a decision that apparently surprised Marvel, who had planned to begin filming in February 2019.

There were reports Marvel's contract with Netflix prohibited them from using any of these Netflix characters for two years after cancellation. When that window passed in November 2018, fans launched a #SaveDaredevil campaign asking Marvel to bring Charlie Cox's Man Without Fear into the MCU. The campaign was vocally supported by the likes of Agents of SHIELD star Clark Gregg and Kingpin actor Vincent D'Onofrio. The latest reports suggest it has been a success, because apparently Charlie Cox will be returning in Spider-Man 3. But does this necessarily mean he's returning as the same version of Daredevil?

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In business terms, it would make more sense for Disney to reboot the character. This is because Daredevil - and all of the other Marvel Netflix shows - are actually Netflix Originals, paid for by Netflix and owned by them in perpetuity. Right now, Marvel is attempting to build a synergy between their films and the Disney+ streaming service, and it simply wouldn't make any sense for them to promote a character whose past adventures can only be seen on Disney+'s main competitor. There's also a notable thematic and tonal discontinuity between Marvel and Sony's (decidedly PG-13) Spider-Man movies and the Marvel Netflix Daredevil series, which is bloody and brutal. Marvel would be wiser to keep Charlie Cox, but reboot the franchise.

Charlie Cox as Daredevil and Tom Holland as Spider-Man

There is actually precedent for this idea in the MCU - and ironically it is found in the Spider-Man films themselves. Spider-Man: Far From Home introduced J.K. Simmons as the MCU's J. Jonah Jameson. Simmons had memorably played this same role in Sam Raimi's classic Spider-Man trilogy, and now he was reprising it in a different universe - as an InfoWars style conspiracy theorist who operated from the site DailyBugle.net. This sets the precedent for the MCU to reboot familiar character using established actors.

There have been rumors of Cox's return in Spider-Man 3 for months, with the latest reports coming from Murphy's Multiverse. It's worth noting they explicitly point out that Cox himself is the only one of the cast who they are reporting on at this stage. "Unfortunately, Cox seems like the only figure salvaged from the Netflix wreckage at the moment," they note, "so any hope of seeing the rest of the cast is up in the air. But yeah, Daredevil got saved." It would make sense for Marvel to keep the same Daredevil but reboot the rest of the cast in order to differentiate it from the original Marvel Netflix series - so don't assume the Man Without Fear's return means the story will continue from where Daredevil season 3 left off.

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