[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for Daredevil: Born Again season 2 episode 8.]
Daredevil: Born Again season 2 ends with a big, game-changing reveal. With Karen (Deborah Ann Woll) on trial for aiding Daredevil’s vigilantism, Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) realizes the best way to save her from prosecution is to reveal his big secret and out himself as Daredevil.
That reveal has gotten a lot of people, including Daredevil: Born Again actor Charlie Cox and showrunner Dario Scardapane, talking about a Marvel villain known as “The Purple Man,” a character many people watching the series may not be familiar with.
Or maybe they are familiar with him but just don’t realize it.
The Purple Man is one of Daredevil’s oldest villains. He appeared in just the fourth issue of Daredevil way back in 1964. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist Joe Orlando, the Purple Man began as a foreign spy named Zebediah Killgrave. While he was infiltrating a US Army depot, he was hit by some nerve gas which turned his skin purple and gave him superhuman powers of persuasion.
If the name Kilgrave sounds familiar, it may be because he, as played by David Tennant, was the main villain throughout the first season of Jessica Jones. While not purple-skinned like his comic book counterpart, he still had the same power, which amounted to his ability to control people’s minds just by speaking to them. And while he began as a Daredevil villain, the Purple Man eventually became the big bad for Jessica Jones in Marvel comics, which is why he was used for the character’s Netflix series.
Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) broke Killgrave’s neck at the end of season 1, killing him, but that hasn’t stopped people from talking about his eventual resurrection in Daredevil: Born Again — even if it’s just to deny he will return. Speaking about Daredevil’s unmasking in the official Disney Plus podcast for Daredevil: Born Again, Scadapane said, “we’re probably not going to be doing Purple Man doing mass brainwashing of an entire city,” in order to undo Daredevil’s identity reveal like what happens in the comics.
Similarly, in an interview with ScreenRant, Cox shared his reaction to Daredevil’s big reveal, saying, “I was shocked because you can’t put that genie back in the box, unless you plan on using the Purple Man’s children from the comics.”
(The Purple Man’s children, or simply the “Purple Children,” are the actual biological children of the Purple Man that possess the same powers of persuasion that he does.)
In the 2014 comic Daredevil, volume 3, number 36, Matt Murdock also does a courtroom reveal of his superhero alter ego, just like in the Daredevil: Born Again season 2 finale. Afterward, Daredevil’s identity remained known in the comics for a full three years. That ended, however, in a story where the Purple Man was using his children to control the minds of everyone in the city via his mind control machine (he’s not a great dad). Daredevil rescues the kids and to thank him, they use the machine to then restore Daredevil’s secret identity, making everyone forget they know who he is.
That’s why people have been talking so much about the Purple Man in light of the Daredevil: Born Again finale. Then again, as we saw with Dr. Strange in Spider-Man: No Way Home, the Purple Man is not the only being powerful enough to undo the outing of a superhero, though it’s doubtful Stephen Stange would want to go through all that a second time for a guy he’s never even met.