Dario Scardapane Talks Writing and Showrunning Daredevil: Born Again and How Crafting Season 1 Differs From the Second

Daredevil: Born Again is technically the fourth season of Daredevil Marvel has produced, but serves as a soft relaunch for the character since switching homes from Netflix to Disney+. The show began filming and before it was finished the writer’s strike went into effect. The executives at Marvel reassessed the show and decided to bring in a new showrunner and writer. 

Enter Dario Scardapane. He’d been the showrunner for The Punisher on Netflix and had an intimate understanding of Daredevil and the world of New York that he existed in. After going through extensive rewrites, reshoots, and putting together a puzzle of existing footage and combining into an all-new vision of a show, Scardapane and his team burst onto the scene this year with the critically acclaimed Daredevil: Born Again. The eight-episode series is an incredible reintroduction to the character, bringing him and his world back into the full fold of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Bold and violent, it’s almost shocking to see it alongside the animated Disney films on Disney+. 

I had a chance to speak to Scardapane about running the show, his best tips for writing, the challenges of putting together such a difficult puzzle of story, and working on a clean slate for season two. 

SCRIPT Magazine: What was it like stepping into something that was already so storied, and then having to carve a path that already had so many pieces in place for you? 

Dario Scardapane: I’ve been a Daredevil fan since the early ’80s with the Frank Miller runs. I discovered those in college, and really, you know, I have a pretty deep understanding, respect, and love for the lore. So… that was always fun. You know, when I was involved with The Punisher and the earlier Netflix shows that world, the old shows, the old comics, that was all kind of in the cooker as far as my creativity. 

Then when I saw the version that they brought me into work with, it was really, really obvious, with all that kind of stuff behind it what parts of it were gonna be enhanced, what parts of it were going to be tossed, and what parts of it were going to be new. 

Strangely, Daredevil is a story, and I think, Punisher's the same way—I think a lot of these iconic Marvel characters are—they know what they want to be, and there's a tone and a type of storytelling that, when you hit it, you know you're in a good place. And when you're not in that place, you really feel like you're swimming upstream. 

This is stuff that I just love. It's the type of storytelling that’s grounded plus you've got guys in suits, but the storytelling is very much action, thriller, noir, and I like that kind of storytelling. Having a lot of experience with the lore made coming in and doing a different version of something that had already been shot easier. I think that if you didn't have that lore, didn't have all of the books, the movies, the previous Netflix show, you would have had to choose a tone. And there was a tone that it wanted to be. 

SCRIPT Magazine: Sitting down and breaking down the story for these episodes, what was that process like? How did you go from point A to point B? I read initially Foggy's death was something that happened off-screen… 

Dario Scardapane: Yeah, off-screen. Crazy. They had about six episodes of material, and I watched it all. It was a cool story. And you're like, “Okay, I get what's happening here.” Fisk has become mayor. Matt's given up being Daredevil, they're these two characters that are truly trying not to be their basic selves. All that was great, but the tragic and traumatic events that had thrown Matt Murdock into this place we didn't see, which means we didn't feel. Which means we were not with him to see and feel those. I knew going in, in one of my first pitches to Marvel was that the story had to start earlier.  

The story has to start to give us all of the reasons and the bridge from the old show to this, from the three names on the napkin to where Matt was now. We had to give context, and then we had to give what I would call emotional context. The loss of Foggy and, in the version that they were working with, both Foggy and Karen had died off-screen, and Karen was not in it. 

For me, for a million different reasons, you can't do a Daredevil story without Karen Page. She's the heart of the storytelling. So, explaining their absence, giving their absence an emotional context had to happen, and that was the first order of business. 

You kick off the show with that. New pilot, so to speak, and then you're in. Then you're in the Mayor Fisk story, you're in the Daredevil story. 

And then it was a matter of turning the dial down on the procedural and up on what I would call the action thriller, the detective hero of Hell's Kitchen story. And adding some action sequences, getting Phil Silvera back and putting the action threads into the story. 

SCRIPT Magazine: You'll get… creators on shows like this that aren't as familiar with the source material. Not that that's a bad thing, right? Talking to Tony Gilroy about Star Wars, he knows about Andor and that’s it. There's nothing wrong with that, because he knocks Andor out of the park. 

Dario Scardapane: Yeah. 

SCRIPT Magazine: With Daredevil, you have so many great runs of Daredevil doing the soul-searching and coming back, whether that’s Kevin Smith's run, or Charles Soule when he does it, or Frank Miller with his runs. 

Dario Scardapane: It's so funny, Charles is… Charles is the touchstone on this one. 

SCRIPT Magazine: For sure. How do you decide what that soul-searching is gonna be like, and what that through-line is for Matt, and how are you gonna bring something fresh and interesting as a writer, and how are you going to explore that? 

Dario Scardapane: It's kind of like the ultimate collaboration. So, what we end up doing, and it's one of the really fun things about working at a place like Marvel, where you have so much IP. Right? And there are runs that I'm unfamiliar with, there are runs that I love that they've already done, you know? Daredevil Born Again, in many ways, was done in Season 3 of Netflix. 

So you kind of build a mashup. You think about events that happened in runs, and I don't want to give anything away, but we're in this process right now with Season 2, we did the same thing. We’re like, “Okay, we know we're in the Mayor Fisk run. Now, the way that they ended that run was not exactly the way we want to end this run. How does the story of Mayor Fisk end?” 

Then you start looking at other runs, other Easter eggs, other, bits and pieces of the Matt Murdock story. 

Between the comics. The actors, the previous show, and the writer's room, you come up with a mashup, and then the storylines on their own go a little bit differently. The way I've talked about Fisk and Murdock in the Mayor Fisk run is that these are two characters who are battling against their true natures. And at the end they really have to be who they are. Fisk can be the Kingpin. Matt has to be Daredevil. 

Then, you come up with the consequences for that. 

As we've seen in the comic book runs for both these guys, there have been a slew of consequences. When it comes to these guys going through really bad times, take your pick, you know? A lot of the things that have happened in the books happen in Season 1 and 2, but they're through a different lens. It's a really kind of a fun balance of the idea that you're collaborating with past writers and in the present time in a new writer's room and with actors who've been playing these roles for 10 years who have a lot to bring to the table. 

You're constantly in the past, the present, and then thinking about, runs you want to do. 

There are storylines, I'm thinking what would be the way to tilt this on its head? 

We have, in my opinion, a really classic one coming up that we're gonna mess with that I'm super excited about. 

SCRIPT Magazine: It's certainly something that feels rewarding as a writer, a comics reader, and a fan, right? I watch the show with my wife, and I will giggle at shots, and she'll ask what's so funny? And I'm like, “Oh, that's a frame right out of this comic.”  

There was one specifically of Matt framed in front of the stained-glass window at the cathedral… 

Dario Scardapane: And we do those so purposefully. There are times in the writer's room that Sana Amanat will come in, and she's like, “This is what you're looking for.” And I'll be like, yes, that is. And we, you know, from the day in the writer's room to the day that we're shooting, we catch that keyframe. 

SCRIPT Magazine: I’ve read that you save writing the finale until you’ve been in production on the show, you’ve had some feedback, worked with the actors… 

Dario Scardapane: The way the studio hates me for that. Well, no, I mean… sometimes you don't know what you've got until you've seen it, you've had some feedback, you see some of the interactions with the actors. 

I mean, had we done this finale without that, it would have had a totally different ending and one that's not as good. Things came out over time, that you're like, “Oh, this has to happen now.” 

And it's all of the kind of X factors of doing something like this where you have chemistry with actors that you didn't expect to have. You have intangibles that are getting created in the process, that are actually becoming something. In my experience, if you try and impose story on to those things, it doesn't work as well as if you let those echoes or intangibles let this guide the story a little bit. 

I usually have a pretty solid penultimate before we end, but I do like scripting the finale while we're shooting. 

SCRIPT Magazine: Does that get frustrating for the actors? 

Dario Scardapane: It's frustrating for everybody. Don't try this at home. No, a lot of people do it. I have good friends who do this similar thing. You have the basics, but you haven't completely landed the plane until pretty late in the game, and yeah, a lot of people aren't comfortable with it. 

SCRIPT MAGAZINE: I've read a lot of production stories about Casablanca, about how the ending wasn't set and Ingrid Bergman was frustrated, but she said, that's what really made her performance about not knowing who she wanted to go with, Rick or Victor, because she didn't know, because it wasn't written. 

Dario Scardapane: I think, particularly when it comes to ending a story, or landing the audience in a place, I can sit there three months ago or four months ago and write it out and say this is where we're gonna end. And it feels really satisfying, and you're like, “Oh, this is a great ending.” 

And then as time goes by, and you're watching the dailies, and you're putting the episodes together, and you find an episode that turns into something way different than what you thought it would be, and there's some power in it that's in a different place. 

You're like, oh wait, “This ending isn't as satisfying as it could be. Let's try this. And I don't know. We'll start earlier next time, because this feels… you know, a little bit of brinksmanship, we're there…” 

I like that process where you find something, and it's not always 100% what you thought you were starting with. 

SCRIPT Magazine: What were you able to find in that way on Season 1, especially given the fact that you had so much on the table already? 

Dario Scardapane: I guess the best way of putting it is that by the end of the episode, the finale, the feeling that Daredevil was going to become something more than just a hero, that he was going to become a symbol and a rallying point for all of these people, all of these regular folk that we had seen throughout. That was where we landed. You know, the city being a character. 

The feeling that there was, for lack of a better word, a resistance growing to what was going on. 

That came late. You know, what was originally kind of the idea for the finale was much more action-oriented, with much more an escape from detention type thing. And then we realized that it was the idea, “We need an army” that grew very late in the game. 

SCRIPT Magazine: Did the BB Urich stuff grow out of any of your experience as a journalist, or was that just sort of like… “I'm a Marvel fan, I'm in New York. Ben Urich is dead, we need a reporter.” Or was it some combination of the two? 

Dario Scardapane: All of the above. Ben Urich's niece was going to be a new version of a journalist. She was gonna have her stuff. Then it became, how do we deal with misinformation? And then, how do we track what people in the city are feeling about the rise of this mayor. And it all kind of came together in a really cool way. 

And going forward. This was one of the main spines of the Mayor Fisk story, the BB story, and her interaction with somebody inside City Hall, you know, Daniel. 

So, the journalist source dance kind of grew out of wanting to have that function that Ben always served, the function that a lot of Marvel storylines have of the crusading journalist. 

That is an iconic kind of thing and it works, and it particularly works now for these times where we're dealing with information and misinformation, and Fisk wants to control the message that vigilantes are bad. 

SCRIPT Magazine: I want to ask about a scene in particular in the storyline between Wilson and Vanessa and the culmination of their relationship. I was really struck by the writing specifically. Where they're having dinner at the end, and you see the blood spatter as a fine art painting behind them, and you realize that her shooting the former lover was them coming together again. That became a release, and they're on the same team again. It was really, really delicate, interesting writing, and it really came out in the performances with the actors and everything, and I'm just wondering if you could talk about it… 

Dario Scardapane: Part of it was having to solve a problem. The idea of the affair had been baked into the earlier version. 

The actor who played Vanessa was not the same actor. And that was one of those things that Vincent had a lot of input on that. Everybody did, and the idea, like, it's got to be Ayelet [Zurer]. That is our Vanessa, she's got to come back. Okay, then you had to explain some of the events of the last time they saw Kingpin in this world, where he's in Echo, he gets shot, he goes to Oklahoma. So we’ve got all of these moving parts.  

And the idea that Vanessa, who was starting going down a darker path at the end of the Netflix show, she’s been minding the store while Fisk has been gone. He returns, he runs for mayor. What does she feel about that? And then that kind of opened all of those doors, and… If Fisk's wife were to have a dalliance? How would he respond to that? Well, of course, it's going to be pretty extreme. 

And then how does this couple that's experiencing a rift—that particular couple—how are they gonna come back together? 

He made a promise. And he kept his promise. 

And she… she had to solve a problem. It was really fun. I mean, that's the best way of putting it, and when you have somebody like Vincent and somebody like Ayelet, who played these characters, you want to evolve a relationship, and this was another evolution, and now they are as tight as they'll ever be, and that's terrifying. 

SCRIPT Magazine: What do you find more creatively satisfying, coming up with this stuff from scratch? Or doing that jigsaw puzzle… moving things around in the sandbox, because it sounds like you've got just as much passion for solving these problems is creating stuff from scratch. 

Dario Scardapane: So, I'll say this. The first season was a massive math problem, and it was really fun to get a lot of talented writers together and weave this in, and at the end of the day, go, “Holy shit, we pulled it off.” 

It is immensely more satisfying to sit down with a blank canvas with the same bunch of writers and build a story from scratch. 

I enjoy this stuff. 

Anytime I sit down to write, I'm not working. You know what I mean? It's like, that's not the work. It's fun. 

It is not the first time I've done something like this. I've worked with existing footage or something that was already there, and it's not the first time I've worked with big IP characters. So, every time you do it before, it kind of informs when you do it now. I love working with established characters like the Punisher, Jack Ryan, Daredevil. That's fun. And in this case, it was an established, major character folding in what you knew of that character to old material. That was fun, too. Now, this season has been to take the story that we kicked off in Season 1 and the second part to it and that's super satisfying. It's all fun. Last season was trickier. 

I'd prefer to start from whole cloth than inherit a bunch of stuff, but, you know, if it comes up again, I'd probably do it again. I’m having a good time this season because the writer's room stayed mostly the same. 

The creative team has stayed the same between seasons, which is always great, and I want to go forward with the same team. 

SCRIPT Magazine: As you are looking for creative inspiration—outside of just comics in the Marvel Universe—I picked up hints of, like, The Godfather, King of New York, etcetera, what were you leaning on as you were ingesting other great works of art, or podcasts, or history, or whatever as you were writing and working on this to fuel your creativity? 

Dario Scardapane: It's a lot of different things. It's always a big mash-up, as you've seen. I wanted to nod to certain classics of New York storytelling. You know, there's quite a bit of King of New York in there. There's quite a bit of Abel Ferrara in there. There's quite a bit of French Connection, there's quite a bit of Michael Mann. There's a lot of those iconic movies in there, and the way that we shot it is supposed to have a little bit more of that Friedkin ’70s feel. But then you also go to places that are unexpected. So, for Season 2, in many ways, it's a Greek epic, where the hero returns to set things right, mixed in with, like, a French resistance story. So you go to some strange places in the stuff that you're reading for that. Usually, it's a combo platter of books and music, and movies. And season 1 really was a lot of what I would call Greek tragedy. 

I’m reading, usually a lot of pulp fiction detective books, a lot of Chandler all the time, a lot of Jim Thompson. I’m constantly kind of absorbing and reading weird stuff. That's the best way of putting it, you know? 

There's elements of The Tempest in this, there's elements of Julius Caesar in this. I think that comic books are a type of mythology, and superheroes are our Greek gods and goddesses, and Hercules of our time. You kind of get into that headspace, you know? I was reading the Iliad, I was reading Odyssey. A lot of these things go into the cooker. 

SCRIPT Magazine: I love diving into that kind of stuff. I think the stuff behind the stuff is so interesting, you know, to see the recipe that goes into the pot. 

Dario Scardapane: I've been really… really fortunate through this job to get to know and have some really amazing conversations with Frank Miller. One of the first things we had a conversation about is Chandler—it always goes back to Chandler for me. And then, you know, you start talking to him about it, and he’s very, very well versed in Greek mythology, and in all sorts of different mythology. And he brought all that to the table. I think a lot of the really great comic book writers that we all you know, aspire to add to their work, Alan Moore comes to mind, Frank comes to mind, they're mining deep wells. You know, you've got a character called Ozymandias, you’re probably, reading some poetry. 

SCRIPT Magazine: You can't look at Frank Miller's work and go, “Yeah, that guy doesn't know anything about mythology,” whether that's Ronin or 300. And, I mean, Sin City is all just what Chandler feels like to Frank Miller. And then when he gets his Daredevil gig, or even Batman, it’s him asking how he can put Chandler onto the page with these superheroes. 

Dario Scardapane: I want to see someday Ronin as a miniseries. I need that in my life. 

SCRIPT Magazine: That would be really cool. It's interesting to see the takes all these different writers put on Daredevil. Whether that’s Charles Soule and his experience as a lawyer and his stamp on the character… 

Dario Scardapane: You know, Charles is one of our consultants. And that's one of the fun things as a writer. I will never look down my nose at genre or heavy-duty IP, Because what's super fun about it, and Frank and I were actually talking about this at dinner. You pick up this stuff. And there's been a bunch of people who worked on it. 

You kind of do your thing with it, hopefully you’ve furthered the ball, and hopefully some of the people that you're borrowing from are like, “Hey, kid, that's cool.” And then you pass it on. 

I like that process, you know what I mean? I like to have been one of the people who got to write The Punisher. I like having been able to write Jack Ryan. I like being able to write Matt Murdock and Fisk. You’re coming from a long tradition, but you're just a link in a chain and hopefully brought something to the table. That’s what the challenge is. There's so many people who have done such cool stuff that you're like, alright, put me in, I'm gonna give it a shot, I hope it's cool. 

SCRIPT Magazine: Is there something… that you've learned from Vincent D'Onofrio and Charlie Cox about Wilson Fisk and Daredevil that you didn't realize before coming into this job that you've been able to take into the writer's room. 

Dario Scardapane: Oh, I mean, which day? The answer is yes. 

The funny thing is, and this is so silly—but I mean, it is a writing magazine—I think one of the best things you can do if you're a screenwriter is take an acting class. 

Just try to understand what the actor's process is, and what the actors have to do. It helps you write much better towards actors. And then you have these two guys who've been playing these characters for 10 years. And I'll give you a very, very specific example. 

When I was writing the diner scene. It was done, and then I sat down with Charlie and Vincent, and we just started talking, and they were talking about the stuff they like, and then the two of them, kind of away from me were like, “There's something missing. There needs to be a moment of humor. And it needs to be real, right?” 

And that's where the whole, I tried to mentor somebody—didn’t she shoot you in the face? And then Fisk laughs thing… That all came out of that.  

And that's their understanding of this relationship, I would have never thought that. I would have truly gone in and written it like it originally was, like two gunslingers are sitting across from each other, is one of them gonna shoot? 

But they brought that little extra thing. And right now, Vincent and I have been talking quite a bit about something that's coming up. 

Where I'm looking at it differently, and what he's bringing to the table is this concept of loss, and as soon as he said that word. 

Loss.  

I was like, “Oh. Okay.” 

They're constantly, both of them, fine-tuning the ideas based on stuff they're bringing to the table, and a lot of times, it puts me in a direction I wouldn't have wouldn't have started at. 

SCRIPT Magazine: How would you recommend writers stay open to that kind of stuff? I know some writers can get precious about their ideas. 

Dario Scardapane: I've written scenes that, note for note, were shot and I was super happy with them, and they were exactly what I intended. And then, I've written stuff that an actor has come in and just gone crazy stuff with, nowhere near the intention. And that's been equally as great. So… look, do I prefer to do it as scripted? Absolutely, but you have to, particularly in stuff like this, where they've been working these characters long before I came in. You gotta be open. 

And being collaborative with your actors, particularly your mains, who are really carrying the weight once the scripts are done. 

This isn't novels, you know, this is 200-plus people who are all working on making this thing, so it's the most collaborative thing I've ever been involved in. 

And you could fight against that and be the benevolent or not-so-benevolent dictator. 

In this type of stuff, with what you just… how we started this conversation, when you're saying there's so much material, you’re kind of fighting against a process if you're not open. And that's kind of my mantra on this show. 

I think it's one of the things I put up on my computers, Be open. Listen and try. 

Of course, there are times you're like, “Nah, man, we're not doing that.” 

SCRIPT Magazine: Is there a version of these characters that is the true north version for you when you think of them? Is it the Charlie Cox, Vincent D'Onofrio characters? Or when you think of the comic book characters as you're writing, is it the Frank Miller…? 

Dario Scardapane: It's Frank Miller. Yeah. When you say North Star. You know, We light Vincent on the Frank Miller panel Kingpin lighting. So… Yeah, I feel like the stuff from his Born Again run, his version of Daredevil, for me. 

It’s that great balance of deep pathos, heavy noir, hardcore mythology. And, let's just be honest, there was a darkness and a violence to his work that seems perfect for these two characters. It worked in the Netflix show, it works in this show. 

SCRIPT Magazine: Do you have writers in your room that aren't into Daredevil as deeply as this, and is that not a hindrance? 

Dario Scardapane: Absolutely. Huge benefit. Huge benefit. If there's two bits of advice I would give in building the room, which building a room is such alchemy, right? 

One, always hire at least one writer who's a better writer than you are, which most showrunners won't do, because they're far too egotistical. 

Two, always have your curveball. What's that thing where if nine people agree on the new Pope one has to disagree? The devil's advocate kind of thing? Always have somebody whose perspective is totally different. It's not the comic book perspective. Have somebody who most of their work has been in romantic comedies, or more YA stuff, and it just helps. We have a crazy mix in our room, and it's a small room, but it’s a wide mix of experience, a wide mix of credits. We have a couple of hardcore comic geeks, but it's not the whole… you can't have that. You'd get one flavor. If everybody was as much of a Daredevil nerd as I was, then it'd be… No. 

SCRIPT Magazine: I think that’s one of the myths I think I encounter so much with people trying to approach IP work. Right? Is that they think, I'm working toward this IP because I love it. And really, the bigger qualification is just to be a great storyteller. Not be a superfan. Like, sometimes that can help… 

Dario Scardapane: Definitely. I've been so lucky to get to work with some pretty cool IP. I've still got my wish list, of course, but when you look at the IP that we all love, all of it came from, at some point, a really great storyteller, whether it's Tom Clancy, whether it's Frank Miller, whether it's Gerry Conway, whether it's Johnny Romita. You've got all of these great storytellers. And the material itself, I'm not saying it's secondary, but they're vessels, for lack of a better word.  

You can tell amazing stories through these characters, and you get an almost instant buy-in, because people know that's Daredevil, the blind kid from Hell's Kitchen, who is a pretty conflicted and super Catholic superhero. 

Okay, you've got that building block, and then you just run with it. I was watching Casino Royale the other day, and what an amazing reintroduction of an iconic character that at the same time goes straight back to what Fleming was doing with that character in the original. You know, Bond was a blunt instrument in the early books. 

SCRIPT Magazine: I don't think people realize how much he'd just go in and get beat up in those early novels. 

Dario Scardapane: Yeah. He was not the slick, suave, martini-swilling guy who was, you know, a pretty dark, tortured, thuggish soul. And when I talk about IP that is top of my wish list. There it is. 

SCRIPT Magazine: In your 32 years with writing credits, what’s the best writing advice you’ve been given and the worst? 

Dario Scardapane: The best advice I've been given was by Walon Green, who, you know is old school, he wrote The Wild Bunch. He worked on Law and Order, he's done everything. He had a hit movie for every decade from the ’60s through the ’90s. And we were at Musso and Frank's, there were probably cocktails involved, and he's like, “Here's the whole thing about TV. If you can't write an episode of TV in a week, you've got no business being in TV.” 

I was like, “Okay.” 

There's been so much bad advice. I don't know if I could pick a good one.  

I actually think that the worst advice I ever got was, “Never compromise on your words, man.” No, because sometimes you've got to… it goes back to the idea of being open. 

I know and have a lot of friends who are very, very, very like, “This comma is here.” That never worked for me. I need to collaborate, and maybe it’s just my nature, but I need to bounce stuff off people. It's much more music than dictation for me. So I need to check in with the other players. If you're building a monologue, or you're building something that is really word heavy, sure, okay, you know what you want. Great. But I think that if you get too locked into your own stuff, you can miss something that worked better, and it's not what I would have done. 

And sometimes there's an intention that's buried that gets found by an actor or a director that you didn't even think of. It might have been there somewhere, like buried deep in your subconscious, but then an actor who right now is doing that for us. Like, Bullseye is a very tricky character to write. And Wilson Bethel brings a completely different dimension to it, that now I've incorporated in my writing when I write Bullseye. 

SCRIPT Magazine: That is all the time we have, thank you so much for all the time you’ve given me.  

Dario Scardapane: Oh, no, man. This is fun. It's more fun to talk about writing than to talk about the, like, “So, is Black Widow gonna be in the MCU in Daredevil?” 

Daredevil: Born Again is streaming in its entirety exclusively on Disney+. Season two is currently in production.