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Daredevil: Born Again begins with a convicted felon running for a major elected office and, to many people's utter shock, winning it. If that feels familiar to you, well, it should - it mirrors the re-election of Donald Trump in many ways, so much so that one could easily forget the show was nearly finished before Trump won in 2024. Still, this isn't the first time that a Trump victory shocked the world, so it's only natural to wonder if 2016 (or at least, the possibility of a second term) was in the creators minds while approaching that show.

Recently, the show's creative head sat down to answer that exact question.

Speaking with IGN on March 7, Daredevil: Born Again showrunner Dario Scardapane was asked about "the parallels between Fisk running for Mayor and what's going on in the world." How much of our current historical moment, asked an interviewer, was in the minds of the Daredevil storytellers as they were making the Disney+ series?

"None! That's the crazy thing," answered Scardapane. "This is picking up Charles Soule's Mayor Fisk storyline that was written about 10 years ago, in 2016. So that was probably in the Zeitgeist then. I inherited some of that storyline."

"The first season and second season," he continues, "Is 'rise of a tyrant.' Whether that's applying to now? I'm actually not in that space. I'm in 'What if Wilson Fisk, criminal, rose to power as mayor?' Yes, sometimes we're feeling prescient, but all of this stuff was written long before these events. So I don't really know."

Not to be "that guy," (although, dear reader, you know we very much are), but the Charles Soule-written Daredevil arc that saw Wilson Fisk win the NYC mayoral election actually started in 2017, with issue #595. So while the story (illustrated by Stefano Landini) does predate Trump's second presidency, it very much was written during (and likely informed by) his first. Still, Scardapane ends his answer with a good point.

"It's an archetypal story," Scardapane concludes, "that's happened many, many times over the centuries. I've been drawing a lot from Greek mythology. But again, it's the same story that we saw reiterated time and time again."

True, Mr. Scardapane, the seemingly shocking rise to power of unexpected megalomaniacs is nowhere near exclusive to the Trump era. To the showrunner's point, the ancient Greeks themselves went through rulers like Polycrates, called by historians the "tyrant of Samos." And yet, we have to imagine that, if an Ancient Greek playwright was writing Daredevil: BC, he couldn't have kept the period's iron-fisted ruler from sneaking in there.

Daredevil: Born Again is streaming now on Disney+.

Fear not, we have the essentials when it comes to Marvel's Daredevil - especially with Marvel Studios' Daredevil: Born Again. Check out:

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