Warning: this article contains spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again Episode 6.
Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 may feature some familiar MCU villains in Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk and Wilson Bethel’s Bullseye, but it also introduces a brand new threat in the form of the artistically inclined serial killer Muse. Muse’s murals have been appearing all over the city, and now we know the full, gruesome story behind their creation.
Visually and in terms of his modus operandi, Muse is pulled directly from the pages of Marvel’s Daredevil comics. But in other ways, the character has been streamlined and altered for his live-action debut. Frankly, we think he’s all the better for it. Here’s why Born Again has been smart in its adaptation of this more recent addition to Daredevil’s rogues gallery.
How Daredevil: Born Again Changes Muse
Again, the new series sticks pretty close to the source material where Muse’s artistic sensibilities lie. He’s a street artist with a particular fascination with New York’s vigilantes. He paints tributes to these figures using human blood as a key ingredient. Though the comic book version of Muse goes a step further with his grisly brand of artistic expression, eventually arranging dead bodies to form sculptures. He’s a villain who wouldn’t be out of place in the Hannibal TV series.
In other ways, however, The MCU’s Muse is quite a bit different from the comic. There’s his apparent lack of powers, for one thing. In the comics, Muse is more than a match for Daredevil and his heightened senses. His body acts as a sort of sensory void that confounds Matt’s senses. He also has superhuman strength and agility for good measure.
In the show, it doesn’t appear that Muse has any powers to speak of. He’s just a guy who really enjoys treating innocent passersby as blood bags and has some passable martial arts skills. But that’s a good thing. Muse really doesn’t need powers to serve as a proper foil to Matt Murdock. Like its predecessor, Born Again exists in a more grounded corner of the MCU. Daredevil, for all his enhanced senses and ninja training, is a guy who emerges from many battles bruised, battered, and thoroughly winded. As long as Muse is presented as a guy who can put up a decent fight, he really doesn’t need superhuman strength to make the stakes feel clear and real.
Plus, the idea that Muse’s body is a sensory vortex was always a bit silly. It’s too on the nose, even for the Marvel Universe. He becomes a character who exists solely to vex Daredevil rather than on his own terms.
The other big difference with Born Again’s Muse is that there’s no sidekick stuck in the middle of the Daredevil/Muse rivalry. At the time Muse was introduced in 2016, Matt was mentoring a hero named Blindspot. It’s Blindspot who wound up suffering the most at Muse’s hands, losing his eyes to the sadistic villain and having to learn how to operate without the benefit of sight.
Here again, the show succeeds in streamlining and simplifying that dynamic so that the focus remains squarely on Daredevil, Fisk, and Muse. By now it’s become apparent that Muse isn’t really the endgame villain of the series, but rather a secondary antagonist meant to test the former two characters. Muse’s blood-soaked artistic campaign puts Fisk’s newfound political career at risk, pushing him closer to outright authoritarianism. In Episode 6, Muse becomes the catalyst that finally compels Matt to throw caution to the wind and become Daredevil again. Having a character like Blindspot in this mix would only serve to needlessly complicate matters.
Muse may not be the central villain of Born Again, but he is an important player who further illustrates the struggle Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk both face in trying to reinvent themselves. The series wisely ignores the comic book elements that don’t really matter to the story being told. But there is one more potential change to Muse that Born Again looks poised to explore in the episodes to come. Who exactly is under that mask?
Muse’s Secret Identity
The Daredevil comics never really get into the question of who Muse is when he’s not dressed in costume and draining human blood to make art. He’s depicted as an Inhuman (the same species as Anson Mount’s Black Bolt and the other characters from the much-reviled Marvel’s Inhumans series). That eliminates the need for the character to have any sort of civilian identity or private life. But in the show, there’s no reason to assume Muse is an Inhuman or anything other than a truly messed-up artistic savant.
But that does raise an interesting question. If Muse is an ordinary man, who is he? Making matters more interesting is the fact that we still don’t know which actor is playing Muse. Marvel has kept mum on that detail, which all but confirms that Muse is secretly someone else we’ve already met in the show.
Who could it be under that mask? There are all sorts of intriguing theories. Maybe Bethel’s Bullseye has somehow escaped from prison and taken on a new costumed identity. Maybe Arty Froushan’s Buck Cashman is up to some unsavory business when not serving as Fisk’s right hand. Maybe Michael Gandolfini’s Daniel Blake is more demented than we gave him credit for (though Blake doesn’t seem to have the right build).
There are even more outlandish possibilities. With all the rampant speculation that Elden Henson’s Foggy Nelson faked his death, maybe we’ll find out it’s Foggy under the mask. Hey, there has to be some reason that Henson is coming back for Season 2.
Whatever the truth here, it seems safe to assume that there’s a big reveal coming as far as Muse’s true identity. And whomever ultimately emerges as the culprit behind Muse’s horrific work, that reveal may serve as the biggest deviation from the comics. As much as the series has succeeded in simplifying and streamlining Muse, it’s also managing to add something new and exciting to the character.
For more on Daredevil: Born Again, find out why the series has found the perfect Punisher villain and see the cast break down Episode 1’s big twist.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.
