Spider-Man: No Way Home writers confirm they had plans for more Daredevil scenes featuring Charlie Cox's Matt Murdock that didn't make the movie.
Spider-Man: No Way Home's writers had plans for more scenes featuring Charlie Cox's Daredevil. Tom Holland's third solo movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe features a packed cast of familiar heroes and villains. The highly-anticipated characters ranged from past Spider-Man franchise villains, such as Alfred Molina's Doc Ock and Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin, to the stars of the prior movies, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire. Spider-Man: No Way Home also includes the first appearance of Cox's Matt Murdock/Daredevil in a proper Marvel Studios production.
Many Marvel fans are quite familiar with Cox's blind lawyer turned vigilante, thanks to Netflix's Daredevil. The series ran until season 3 and cemented Cox as a perfect casting choice for Matt Murdock, leading to most fans hoping that he'd appear in future MCU movies after Daredevil was canceled. Following months of rumors about Cox's return, Spider-Man: No Way Home officially brought him back to be Peter Parker's lawyer at the beginning of the movie. While the character only appeared in one scene, there could've been a lot more of Daredevil.
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As part of a lengthy interview with The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith (via Comicbook), Spider-Man: No Way Home writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers discussed the process of writing the script. This included talking about the possibility of Spider-Man: No Way Home featuring more Daredevil scenes. McKenna confirmed that the pair did have many other ideas for how Cox's Matt Murdock could factor into the movie. However, everyone ultimately agreed that it was better to limit Spider-Man: No Way Home's Daredevil role to keep the focus on Peter Parker's story.
"That was the challenge with this movie bringing all these other characters in. We love these characters, and you would love to see them do all kinds of stuff. But the question is, what is there room for? I could watch any of these characters we brought in just do a whole other movie by themselves or in some various combination, but we have to, ultimately, service the story of our Peter Parker and our Spider-Man. No matter how tempting it is ... We had so many ideas come up in the room of, 'Wouldn't it be cool if this guy does that, and these two meet and do that...?' There's just so many exciting permutations now that we're playing in this sandbox. But at the end of the day, there was only so much we could do, and we didn't want to do things that would distract from the story of our Peter and our Spider-Man. So absolutely, once we knew we were gonna have Matt Murdock, it's like, 'He could do this, he could do that, that would be so cool, wouldn't that be great?' ... But ultimately, we always had to pull back on a lot of things to just make sure we maintained our focus."
The explanation for Daredevil's small role in Spider-Man: No Way Home provided by the writers makes sense. The movie was already quite ambitious in the story it wanted to tell, and all of the characters it needed to involve to do it properly. Five multiverse villains, two other Spider-Men, Doctor Strange, Daredevil, and the Homecoming trilogy's regulars like Aunt May, MJ, and Ned, all played big roles. Ultimately, Cox's cameo as Matt Murdock worked perfectly in the context of Spider-Man: No Way Home, since the film didn't have much room for him to return based on its jam-packed plot; unless Daredevil had joined the trio of Spider-Men in the final fight.
While most viewers wanted to see much more of Daredevil in Spider-Man: No Way Home and may be disappointed upon learning he could've had a bigger role, his MCU future is still quite bright. Marvel Studios hasn't officially confirmed that Charlie Cox will play Daredevil in other MCU Phase 4 projects. However, there are growing expectations that Matt Murdock will be in She-Hulk and interact with Tatiana Maslany's Jennifer Walters. This is one of many MCU projects where Daredevil could appear, as Echo and Moon Knight are also possible. In any case, Marvel Studios wouldn't bring Cox back for this small role and not use him again, so Spider-Man: No Way Home should be just the start of his journey.