It’s been a huge couple of weeks for those that hold firm in the belief that shows including Daredevil and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are part of official Marvel Cinematic Universe canon, despite Kevin Feige claiming that the slate had been wiped clean when he became the company’s chief creative officer.
As much as the boss tries to convince us that the franchise’s episodic expansion began in earnest with WandaVision, he’s started piling evidence up against himself. Not only did he admit that Charlie Cox will be the MCU’s Matt Murdock, but the most recent episode of Hawkeye revealed the return of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin.
When you’ve got the hero and villain of a three-season show being revealed as parts of the main MCU mythology, then Feige doesn’t really have much of a leg to stand on anymore. However, during an interview with Insider, Hawkeye directors Bert and Bertie dances around the question when it was put to them directly.
“We kinda loved that it was this grainy, grainy impression of him and just confirms everyone’s suspicions because there have been lots of theories and that one’s been the outstanding theory about who this was. It’s Marvel. There’ve been different iterations of how Kingpin was revealed and this is the one that served the story, to hold him back to the very end of five. Keep the theories going. We love every single one and we love avoiding every single question about it.”
Of course, we could be talking about a variant that places Netflix’s Daredevil in a different universe, or it could be the same Wilson Fisk, because it’s not as though it has to be addressed directly. Hopefully we’ll get a better idea when D’Onofrio gets something meaningful to do besides pose for cellphone snaps in next week’s Hawkeye finale.