Some seven years after Netflix’s acclaimed Daredevil series was unceremoniously axed, the Man Without Fear is back and making himself at home in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While Daredevil and the rest of the Defender-centric shows lived in their own MCU purgatory, Marvel Studios is finally free to do what it wants with its street-level heroes and villains. With it, Daredevil: Born Again has already planted itself firmly in the MCU with nods to the wider world.

Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock already stopped by for brief cameos in Echo, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and Spider-Man: No Way Home, while Vincent D’Onforio’s Wilson Fisk/Kingpin survived a run-in with a bullet in Hawkeye and popped up in the Echo miniseries, too. Despite D’Onofrio repeatedly saying Kingpin won’t be the big bad of the upcoming Spider-Man 4, and no Born Again cast members appeared in that achingly long Avengers: Doomsday roll call,...