When Daredevil: Born Again debuted last year, many fans weren’t particularly happy with the way the show dropped Matt Murdock’s best friends at the start of the season. Elden Henson’s Foggy Nelson was killed off, and Deborah Ann Woll’s Karen Page moved to San Francisco for the majority of the season. Nelson, Murdock & Page was no more!
Meanwhile, behind the scenes Born Again Season 1 underwent an upheaval during production, with the original creative team let go by Marvel and new showrunner Dario Scardapane brought in to fix the show, which Marvel execs reportedly felt “wasn’t working.”
And while bringing Foggy back from the dead wasn’t in the cards (yet?), Scardapane says that he always knew Karen, after returning at the end of Season 1, would be back full time for Season 2.
“There wasn’t even a decision,” the showrunner recently told me. “It was kind of built into Season 1. When I came in and talked to these guys, and we outlined what we wanted to do, big picture, Karen was a big part of that. And then as we ended Season 1, she returned to Daredevil’s life. She’s there for a reason, now that Kingpin has taken over New York. And she’s an integral part of the resistance. God, that was built in. That’s been around for a long time.”
Executive producer Sana Amanat agrees, and points out that the character has evolved much over the years. In addition to her time on Daredevil – both the Netflix and now Disney+ versions – she was also an integral part of the Jon Bernthal Punisher series as well.
“You’ve seen her in so many different forms,” says Amanat. “And we were excited about continuing to take her further. So her relationship with Matt was important, how they’re affected by Foggy’s loss. It’s so rich with story that we knew she was going to be in there.”
