Daredevil: Born Again S1E1 (2025) sequence shot
Year : 2025
Directors: Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (Moon Knight, Loki S2, The Endless, Synchronicity)
Country: United States (Disney+ / Marvel Studios)
Showrunner: Dario Scardapane
Main actors: Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock / Daredevil), Wilson Bethel (Bullseye / Dex Poindexter), Elden Henson (Foggy Nelson)
Cox's stunt double: Chris Brewster (present on the franchise since season 1 on Netflix)
Sequence duration: 16-minute prologue, approximately half of which is in one shot.
Method: composite shot ("stitched oner") - hidden cuts in camera movements and passages in darkness
Franchise tradition: 4th major one in the Daredevil franchise
S1E2 "Cut Man" (2015): corridor, ~5 min, TRUE continuous shot, ~12 takes
S2E3 "New York's Finest" (2016): staircase, assembled plan
S3E4 "Blindsided" (2018): prison, ~11 min, assembled shot, 3 takes (the 3rd take - "11 minutes 25 seconds")
Born Again S1E1 (2025): Josie's Bar → roof, assembled plan
Declared influence (franchise): Old Boy (Season 1, confirmed by Chris Brewster); Children of Men (Season 3, confirmed by Alex Garcia Lopez)
Josie's Bar. The seedy Hell's Kitchen bar where Matt, Foggy, and Karen used to spend their evenings. Except tonight, nothing is normal. Bullseye (Wilson Bethel) is there. Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) is there. And in a few seconds, everything changes. Foggy is hit. He's going to die. Matt knows it. And rage overwhelms him. The camera plunges into the fight, Matt versus Bullseye in the bar, amidst overturned tables, shattered glass, and bodies crashing against the walls. It circles them like a trapped witness, moving in for close-ups of pain, pulling back for the most violent impacts. Then the fight spills out of the bar, onto the stairs, onto the roof. And Matt does the unthinkable: he throws a man off a building. The camera doesn't cut. It watches Matt Murdock, the devout Catholic who never kills, commit the act that will define the entire season. While Foggy dies below, Matt breaks his only rule above. And the camera, refusing to cut, forces you to watch both—the death of the friend and the fall of the hero—as a single, continuous, and irreversible event.
Why this scene is iconic
The Daredevil long take isn't a moment of bravery; it's a tradition. Since season 1 in 2015, each season of Daredevil has been defined by its long take of a fight in a corridor. The first, the corridor fight in "Cut Man" (S1E2), directly inspired byOld Boy, became a benchmark of the genre. The second, the staircase fight in "New York's Finest" (S2E3), raised the bar. The third, the prison break in "Blindsided" (S3E4), which openly references Children of Men, lasted 11 minutes and is considered the technical pinnacle of the franchise.
Born Again was meant to perpetuate this tradition while reinventing it. Benson and Moorhead explained why their one-shot is different from all the previous ones: "There's a sort of dolly zoom reminiscent of Vertigo, to represent his sensory experience." But above all, it's the first one-shot in the franchise to serve as a moment of moral rupture—not a rescue, not an escape, but the character's transgression. Moorhead: "It's while Foggy is dying and is dead, and it's also when he commits this heinous act of throwing someone off a building and trying to kill them, and crossing a line he's never crossed before."
Benson added: "This moment is probably the most impactful thing in his life, for the rest of his life, shaking his faith to its core and making him question his own place in the universe."
The continuous shot is the tool of this transgression: by refusing to cut between Foggy's death and the enemy's fall, the camera links the two events into a single causal chain. You cannot separate them. Foggy dies, and it is because Foggy dies that Matt kills. The continuous shot renders this causality physically irreversible, just as Code Unknown (Haneke, 2000) links Jean's action and Amadou's arrest by refusing to cut.
How they filmed it
Charlie Cox distinguished the three types of long takes in the franchise at New York Comic Con 2024: "There have been three types. The first, in S1E2, is a true one-shot. We filmed until we got the perfect take, and there are no cuts. The camera moves, films everything, and if anything doesn't work, we start again." He added that the long take in season 2 used hidden seams in dark scenes (jackets, dark walls), and that Born Again does the same: "We have a very long, very cool one-shot sewn into the new season."
Benson and Moorhead described their approach as "impossibly audacious," with "divine" camera movements reminiscent of their own indie filmography (The Endless, Synchronicity), where an invisible, all-powerful entity manipulates reality. The camera in Born Again behaves like that entity: it's everywhere, knows everything, sees everything, and never lets you look away.
The franchise's technical tradition is meticulously documented. For the original one-shot of S1E2: Stunt coordinator Philip Silvera and director of photography Matthew J. Lloyd had only half a day to set up the camera angles; the other half was for stunt rehearsals. They filmed approximately 12 takes in a single day. Cox and Brewster (his stunt double) alternated in dark scenes when the camera panned into shadows; Brewster took Cox's place for physical stunts, and then Cox returned for close-ups. For the one-shot of S3E4: Tom Lieber, VP of Marvel Television, was nervous about the 11-minute shot proposed by director Alex Garcia Lopez, but the crew's enthusiasm won him over. Cox texted on the day of filming: "Take 3, 11 minutes and 25 seconds." The next day, at the Marvel office: "Nobody worked. They watched the rushes on a loop, clapping their hands."
What to observe when reviewing it
The bar-to-roof transition (mid-shot) — The fight begins in Josie's Bar and ends on a rooftop. The transition from stairs to hallway to roof is where the seams become hidden. Look for the dark scenes and dramatic pans.
Cox's face after the fall (end of shot) — Matt has just thrown a man into the void. Look at his eyes. He realizes what he's done. It's the face of a man who has just lost his faith, and the camera doesn't offer him a cut to hide behind.
The Old Boy Legacy (Combat Composition) — Chris Brewster confirmed that the S1E2 one-on-one directly referenced Old Boy. Look for the DNA: the spatial confinement, the accumulated fatigue, and above all, the clarity of the action; you see every blow, every hesitation, every mistake. Born Again inherits this clarity.
Did you know that?
The Daredevil franchise is the only franchise in television history where the one-shot fight is a narrative contractual obligation; every season MUST have its one-shot. Cox himself said, "It's not a real Daredevil season without a great one-shot fight." TheWrap ranked the franchise's five one-shots (the three Netflix series + The Defenders + Born Again) and concluded that "a Daredevil season is only as good as its hallway fight.".
The "Cut Man" one-shot (S1E2, 2015) changed the language of superhero television. Collider noted that before Daredevil, action scenes in TV series used the Bourne style (close-ups, frenetic editing). After Daredevil, with John Wick released the same year, wide shots and long takes became the norm. The "Cut Man" one-shot is to the MCU television series what the True Detective S1E4 shot is to television drama: the moment when directing took over.
Born Again brings a ten-year cycle full circle. The one-shot for S1E2 referenced Old Boy (2003). The one-shot for S3E4 referenced Children of Men (2006). The one-shot for Born Again references... Daredevil himself. The franchise has become its own reference point. This is a sign that a tradition has been born and that it is now as important to the series' identity as the mask, the costume, or the corridor.
Sources
Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead - TheWrap, "'Daredevil: Born Again' Directors Break Down That One-Take Hallway Fight" (March 2025)
Charlie Cox - Collider / NYCC, "Charlie Cox On the One-Shot Fighting Sequence" (October 2024)
Philip Silvera, S1 stunt coordinator - Observer (2015)
Tom Lieber, VP Marvel Television - SlashFilm, "Daredevil's Famous One-Take Fight Scene Was A Tough Sell" (June 2022)
Steven DeKnight, showrunner S1 - SlashFilm (2022)
Chris Brewster, stunt double - Entertainment Weekly (confirmed Old Boy influence)
Alex Garcia Lopez, director of S3E4 - reference Children of Men (confirmed by SlashFilm)
TheWrap – “Every Daredevil Hallway Fight, Ranked” (April 2025)
Collider – “Daredevil’s Iconic Hallway Fight Scene Changed the MCU” (January 2024)
Collider - "Here's What Really Went Into Daredevil's Best Fight Sequence" (February 2025)
CinemaBlend - "How Many Takes It Took Daredevil To Get The Hallway Scene Right" (April 2015)
Read also
The Studio (2025) https://www.plan-sequences.com/categories-de-plans-sequences/the-studio - The other continuous-shot series from 2025, previous entry in the collection, comedy rather than superhero drama
True Detective S1E4 (2014) https://www.plan-sequences.com/categories-de-plans-sequences/true-detective-saison1-episode4 - Next in the collection, the other television single-take shot that changed the way we present our work on the small screen
