Daredevil: Born Again Twist Just Put the MCU’s Most-Wanted Character’s Return Within Reach

This week’s Daredevil: Born Again drops a game-changing twist that tees up the long-awaited return of a missing MCU fan favorite. After a first season packed with shock debuts and comebacks on Disney+, including The Punisher’s move from Netflix, the stage is set for an even bigger homecoming.

Here is where Daredevil: Born Again just got interesting. This week’s twist doesn’t just shake up Matt and Karen’s war with Fisk — it also tees up a very real path for one of the MCU ’s best missing players to walk back on screen.

Quick catch-up: who’s already back

If you’ve been keeping score, the Netflix- to-Disney+ pipeline is wide open. This show has already folded in Punisher and Bullseye, with Kingpin anchoring the whole thing after his Hawkeye and Echo return. Jessica Jones is crossing over this season too. And last season, a second Hawkeye alum popped up: Swordsman, in cuffs, branded a vigilante.

This week’s move: the task force isn’t monolithic

Matt and Karen finally stop running and go straight at Fisk’s machine. Karen nabs a member of the anti-vigilante task force to interrogate — which sounds brutal, but the point lands: not everyone in that unit is dirty. There’s an internal faction pushing back from the inside.

One of those insiders hands Matt a passkey to the site where vigilantes are being stashed off the books. That lines up with a sham courtroom sequence where Swordsman gets railroaded. The takeaway is blunt: Fisk has bent the justice system out of shape, and these trials are theater — everyone in a mask is guilty by default.

Armed with the passkey intel, Matt stages a prison break, gets Swordsman his blade back, and the whole crew punches their way out. As a plot turn, it’s fun. As a setup for a bigger return, it’s louder than it looks.

Why that jailbreak screams: bring back Kate Bishop

Swordsman is Jack Duquesne — Eleanor Bishop’s ex-fiance. Hawkeye ended with Eleanor in handcuffs for murder and Jack more or less shrugging his way into a blissfully weird second act. Kate, meanwhile, has been MIA in live action since that final stinger in The Marvels where Kamala Khan pitched her on a team-up. She did pop in on What If...? alongside Ironheart, but that’s animation — different lane.

Given Fisk’s shadow over everything and Jack’s renewed proximity to vigilante drama, it would make sense for him to reach out to Kate or for Kate to get pulled back in. The show just put her nameplate on the desk without actually saying it.

The scheduling reality check (and why your Kate cameo expectations should be low)

The current season filmed between February and July 2025. During that stretch, Hailee Steinfeld — who plays Kate — married Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen in May 2025, then announced her pregnancy that December, and welcomed a daughter this month. Put together, that makes a Kate return here very unlikely, and it also throws cold water on her showing up in Avengers: Doomsday. If you are holding out hope for a later Daredevil: Born Again season (think Season 3), the same math probably applies. Could she have quietly taped something small? Never say never, but don’t bet the quiver on it.

What the show can actually use in the Fisk war

Here’s the behind-the-scenes wrinkle the episode all but underlines: the Born Again team doesn’t have free rein with the big-screen Avengers bench. The showrunner has said most movie- headliners are off the board, but Disney+ characters are fair game. That makes the roster more street-level, which honestly suits this series.

• Already in play: Swordsman and a new White Tiger (White Tiger 2), plus Jessica Jones this season.
• Question mark: Kamala Khan straddles both Disney+ and the movies, so she is more complicated.
• Likely fits: Echo could slide in cleanly, given her history with Fisk.
• Biggest potential swing: Luke Cage. Mike Colter has strongly hinted he could be back. In the comics, Luke wins the New York City mayoral race and ends Fisk’s stranglehold. That arc would fit this show like brass knuckles.
• Redemption tour candidates: Finn Jones getting another shot as Iron Fist, and familiar faces like Rosario Dawson (Night Nurse), Simone Missick (Misty Knight), and Jessica Henwick (Colleen Wing) to round out the Netflix-to-Disney+ handoff.

The bottom line

By exposing Fisk’s kangaroo court and springing Swordsman, Born Again just opened a clean runway for Kate Bishop to matter again — even if the odds of a Hailee Steinfeld sighting this season (or in a near-term Avengers film ) are slim. In the meantime, expect the show to keep stacking the board with the characters it actually controls. If Luke Cage walks through the door and aims higher than street justice, that’s your checkmate on Fisk.