MCU fans who still believe in a redemption arc are counting the hours until the release of Echo, Marvel’s first TV show to receive a TV-MA rating. One of the characters we’re looking forward to seeing once again is Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin. News of his return previously brought up some interesting questions given his fate in Hawkeye, but D’Onofrio has now cleared the air on this issue.
Fans who watched Hawkeye will recall Kingpin’s final interaction with Maya Lopez/Echo. Though you don’t see him actually die, the scene implies that Echo shoots Kingpin, and the conspicuous “eye to eye” remark from Kingpin suggests her bullet went through his eye. If that isn’t enough proof, the Echo trailer depicts Kingpin with an eye patch on his left eye.
Addressing this issue, D’Onofrio spoke to TV Line, stating, “If you’re a fan of Kingpin and Daredevil – the old comics – you know that Kingpin never dies. We just had to figure out a clever way of [moving] on from that shot towards the face and how we bring it into Echo, and we came up with a really cool thing. He does get hurt pretty bad.”
Some less nerdy viewers may scream “plot armor,” but this storyline is loosely adapted from Daredevil #15. After Lopez learns of Wilson Fisk’s involvement in her father’s death, she confronts him with a gun pointed to his face. Similar to the cliffhanger in Hawkeye, Lopez fires the gun at Kingpin, but you don’t get to see a panel showing the actual shooting.
The aftermath is where the show diverges from the comics. In the latter, Kingpin gets blinded, losing eyesight in both eyes. However, in the MCU, it appears the crime lord of New York will only need to wear an eyepatch and not have to walk with a cane like his nemesis, Matt Murdock.
While Kingpin finds a way to cure his blindness in the comics, it’s not certain if Marvel Studios will feel the need to bring that angle to the MCU. If it does, it will probably be explored in Daredevil: Born Again. Initially expected to debut early this year, Daredevil: Born Again has found itself plagued with production problems, which necessitated a complete overhaul of the project.
D’Onofrio has expressed in an interview with Collider that he’s excited about the new direction of the show, saying, “We’re having a really good time right now. We’re getting back up. We’re gonna start soon, hopefully sooner than later, and Charlie [Cox] and I feel like the right vibe is there.”
The fact that D’Onofrio is now pleased with the tone of the series is a good sign for fans of MCU’s darker universe. The world Daredevil, Kingpin, and Echo occupy is raw, violent, and merciless that doesn’t belong to heroes in capes. Even the good guys find themselves flirting with the line between good and evil in more than one encounter. Rawr?
Such a world demands that it not be censored. Anything other than a TV-MA rating would very likely be seen as a great injustice to many fans who are hoping that this is the kind of vibe Vincent D’Onofrio was talking about.
Echo will premiere on Disney+ and Hulu tomorrow, with all episodes dropping at once.
