Despite being near universally considered to be the the absolute low-point of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Daredevil actor Charlie Cox is standing by his ‘Walk of Shame’-based cameo in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.
The actor spoke to the Man Without Fear’s proper, costumed MCU debut during a recent interview with Digital Spy given in promotion of his upcoming Netflix series Treason, wherein he plays an MI6 agent whose life is thrown into turmoil by the reappearance of a former lover-turned-Russian-spy.
Asked for his thoughts on the general fan rejection of his character-breaking, yellow-and-red-clad appearance in She-Hulk, Cox opined, “There are things that you do when you’re playing a superhero. There are scenes that you read, and you go, ‘The fans are going to love this. This is knock-out’, and then there’s stuff like the walk of shame, where you’re like, ‘I don’t know. This could go two ways. This could be something that the fans really enjoy, and it could be something that feels like it goes against the nature of what they love about the character and the tone of the piece.’
To that end, the fan-favorite actor explained, “The good thing about doing it on something like She-Hulk is, it’s not Daredevil’s show. It was my job as the actor to come onto another person’s show and embrace the tone, whilst staying as true to the character as I possibly could.”
“In this world, Matt’s in LA, and he lets his hair down a little bit,” recalled Cox. “He’s just having fun. He’s killing it in the courtroom. You know, he has a fling with a really beautiful and charismatic lawyer. And then they get to do some superhero stuff.”
“It tonally felt very different from everything I’ve done as that character,” he added, “but that was also really exciting and new and different and in keeping with the character.”
In further justification of Daredevil’s starkly different treatment in She-Hulk compared to his original series, Cox pointed to Horn Head’s comic book history, arguing, “If you read the comics, there are a series of Daredevil comics where the tone is much lighter, and he is much more kind of silly and goofy than perhaps we’ve done much of previously with this character.”
Ultimately, Cox asserted, “You can’t please all the people all the time. If She-Hulk’s not your thing, then don’t watch it. Watch something else.”
It should be noted that while Daredevil has had some rather light-hearted appearances throughout the years – his time playing up his then-public secret identity during Mark Waid and Chris Samnee’s run on Daredevil Vol. 4 comes to mind – much of the ‘humor’ in Daredevil stories comes from Matt’s straight-forward, by-the-books personality.
Take, for example, the three-way team-up The Omega Effect storyline that ran across Avenging Spider-Man Vol 1, Punisher Vol 9, and Daredevil Vol 3 in 2012.
Though it features numerous jokes involving Daredevil, they’re never made by the hero – nor does he make any eye-rolling MCU ‘quips’ – with the laughs instead coming about from the fact that he has little patience for either Frank or Spidey’s actions.
Further, to point to the comic books in defense of Daredevil’s mishandling by Jessica Gao and crew falls flat given the different production goals of each respective medium.
In the comic books, a character is regularly passed around by different writers, makes appearances in various crossovers, and is held at the whims of whatever editorial reboot – all of which opens up them up to various changes, for better or worse.
However, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been sold as one, overarching story that’s prided itself on doing with comics’ confusing continuity issues by keeping the characters and plots consistent across all of their potential appearances.
As such, Daredevil’s MCU-ified appearance was not only disappointing for fans of the character, but also confirmed that Marvel no longer really cares about their characters outside of their money-making and key-jangling potential.
Cox will reprise his role as the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen in Daredevil: Born Again, which is currently set to hit Disney Plus sometime in 2024.
Meanwhile, Treason hits Netflix on December 24th.
NEXT: ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Will Ignore Previous Series Lore, According To Actor Charlie Cox