Daredevil: Born Again’s showrunner, Dario Scardapane, set out to deliver an action-packed superhero series for Disney+, while building on the original beloved Netflix series, and to tell a story with new and returning characters from the previous season.

Did Scardapane and his team succeed? Barely.

A complaint I and other fans had about the previous season of Born Again was the lack of Matt Murdock actually being Daredevil, which led to a lackluster finale promising a more climactic second season. Thankfully, this season answered that promise.

Almost every episode had thrilling fight scenes that felt ripped straight from a page in a Daredevil comic book, something I couldn’t always say about the original Netflix show.

Easily the standouts for me this season were Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin and Wilson Bethel’s Bullseye.

Thankfully, Scardapane threw out the original show’s grounded setting and allowed for more comic-accurate action. Daredevil swings across the city with his billy clubs like he’s Spider-Man, Bullseye performs the most ridiculous trick shots ever, and Kingpin could rip a man in half with his bare hands.

Bethel was a great addition to the original show’s final season and has shown how far he can push this character in and out of his action scenes. D’Onofrio’s Kingpin feels like the center of this season; his presence is felt in every scene, as it should at this scale.

Originally, I wasn’t really sold on Mayor Kingpin’s “Anti-Vigilante Taskforce” since there aren’t really any vigilantes to arrest. I wasn’t expecting Spider-Man or Moon Knight to show up, but it would’ve been better than Tony Dalton’s swordsman as the one and only vigilante besides Daredevil.

However, I do appreciate the parallels the show draws between Kingpin’s A.V.T.F. and President Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, showing the abuse by those in power and the innocents who have to suffer for it.

Charlie Cox returns to explore a new angle of the Man Without Fear this season. The Netflix version of Daredevil was a gritty vigilante who used his heightened senses to beat criminals into a bloody pulp, while Disney+’s Daredevil leads a revolution to save his city from a fascist mayor.

However, we don’t get to see Daredevil really explore that role as a “beacon of hope for a whole city” like he is referred to early on in this season. A flaw in the previous season that has returned is the handful of new side characters that take up far more screentime than they should’ve.

I understand why Scardapane and his team would focus on new characters to potentially avoid retreading previous character arcs for Murdock, but there are 62 years of comics they could’ve pulled from to enhance his character. There is one whole episode where Murdock voices his inner conflict, and it is a very shallow interpretation of Daredevil that is immediately swept under the rug.

Nine times out of 10, I felt like I had to read the expressions on Cox’s face and guess what they were trying to say about his character’s arc when the show didn’t say it out loud for me. Just to cut back to the five new characters and their backstories shoved in my face before I could get crumbs of Daredevil every episode.

To the show’s credit, most of the new characters did have moments that grasped my interest and were genuinely well written. However, that doesn’t warrant the amount of screentime these characters get every single episode.

This season also has a weird obsession with referencing the original Netflix show. I feel like more than half of the episodes had some sort of specific reference to it. I love that show, it’s the sole reason why I fell in love with this character and his corner of the Marvel Universe, but I’d rather just watch the old show.

Going from returning side characters, returning locations, reusing old scenes as flashbacks, to recreating the original show’s aspect ratio and color grading for a flashback scene set during the old show. This fan service further pushes this series deeper into the original’s shadow, which it has been trying to get out of since the show was announced, in my opinion. I was very happy with how the original show ended, and I just wanted more Daredevil.

Whether that meant he was just a cameo when the Avengers needed a lawyer or never coming back at all, I was more than happy with just those three seasons. I don’t want this show to be a continuation of the original but to stand on its own two feet and tell a good Daredevil story.

I can tell Scardapane understands Daredevil’s character and is more than capable of translating Murdock’s self-destructive but righteous crusade for justice on the small screen.

I am looking forward to the next season of Daredevil: Born Again, but based on the set leaks and the series finale, I believe the series will continue to hold itself back from being the definitive Daredevil show it can be.