Marvel's The Defenders: What the ending could mean for Daredevil season 3

The Man Without Fear may be headed for a new life in his next season.

At the end of Marvel’s the Defenders, Daredevil (Charlie Cox) remained inside the crumbling Midland Circle building to keep Elektra (Elodie Yung) busy while the rest of the Defenders made it out alive. His apparent death hit his teammates and inner circle hard, but in the closing minutes of the series, Matt was revealed to still be alive and in the care of nuns. As he wakes, one calls out for a sister named “Maggie,” presumably Maggie Murdock, Matt’s mother.

The scene is a fairly obvious homage to a shot from Daredevil‘s 1986 “Born Again” comic book arc penned by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli (the team behind Batman: Year One) — even though showrunner Marco Ramirez told EW he couldn’t confirm the identity of “Maggie” or the meaning behind the scene.

“I can say that visually that shot at the end of Daredevil’s story was definitely an homage, as were a couple of other scenes, to the comics,” Ramirez explained. “That’s one of my favorite Daredevil images, so regardless of who any of the characters are, I went to the production meeting saying this is the image we’re going for, we’re going to feel like this, and that came from that image that I purposely borrowed from the comics.” Take a look at how the shot compares to the image below:

Still, this final shot does provide some clues to the potential direction of Daredevil‘s third season. In the “Born Again” arc, Matt is targeted by Wilson Fisk after a desperate Karen Page, who’s become a heroin-addicted porn actress — it’s a long story — sells out her ex-boyfriend for cash. Fisk effectively destroys Matt’s entire life, both as the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen and as a lawyer, and he descends into insanity and paranoia until he’s saved by his mother, Sister Maggie. The story line became popular thanks to its religious iconography and deconstruction of Daredevil’s Catholicism, and for its overall darker tone — all of which turn the character into something more than just another vigilante in New York.

In other words, the future of Marvel and Netflix’s take on Daredevil could see a shift in Karen’s story, the return of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Fisk (who in season 2 did ask for more intel on Matt Murdock while in prison), and potentially even involve Will Simpson (Wil Traval), last seen in Jessica Jones morphing into Nuke, who plays a role in “Born Again” story as well. But with Daredevil season 3 not in production until after the second season of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage wrap up, all anyone can do is wait.

Marvel’s The Defenders is now streaming on Netflix.