The opening two episodes of Daredevil: Born Again set the stage for another explosive tussle between Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk—but before we even got to all that, the new Marvel streaming show kicked off with one hell of an opening.
“Heaven’s Half Hour” begins with a shocking attack by none other than Bullseye, who fatally shoots Foggy Nelson as he and Karen Page are leaving Josie’s Bar, having slaughtered a bunch of other bystanders while fighting Daredevil and seemingly assassinating one of Foggy’s clients. It’s the inciting incident of the whole series, one that sees Matt give up being Daredevil for over a year, and for Karen to leave him and New York alike for a life of her own in San Francisco.
But it’s also one that fans are now suddenly scrambling to find a way out of… and they think that may have found it in the address of Matt, Foggy, and Karen’s law firm.
Nelson, Murdock, and Page’s Address Might Be a Comics Clue
Established formally at the very end of the Netflix Daredevil series, we briefly see Nelson, Murdock, and Page’s address in the opening episode of Born Again: while we don’t see the street itself, we do see it’s housed at number 468. As of writing, across eight volumes between 1964 and 2025 there have been 680 issues of Daredevil. Although Marvel has reset the counter on issues multiple times over the course of those volumes, when Daredevil was going to pass 500 issues in 2009 the company reverted to legacy issue numbering.
It’s a trend that returned again, interestingly, starting in November 2017 with Daredevil #595—the beginning of the “Mayor Fisk” arc by Charles Soule, Stefano Landini, Matt Milla, and Clayton Cowles that Born Again is currently adapting in its first season. Anyway, what does all that number crunching have to do with it? Well, it means that Daredevil #468 (by Ed Brubaker, David Aja, Frank D’Armata, and Cory Petit) was published in August 2006 as Daredevil #88, telling an interstitial story between arcs titled “The Secret Life of Foggy Nelson.”
A story about how Foggy had actually escaped being murdered, and was now in witness protection.
How Did Foggy Cheat Death in the Comics?
“The Secret Life of Foggy Nelson” comes at a turning point in a major storyline in Daredevil. During the events of the prior arc, “The Devil in Cell Block D,” Matt Murdock had been put on trial by the FBI, accused of a series of crimes that linked him to being the alter ego of the vigilante Daredevil. Through an array of surreptitious, underhanded deals, Matt is sent to Ryker’s Island (the name used for the actual Riker’s Island in Marvel Comics continuity) to be detained as a potential flight risk, in a long-winded attempt to have Matt either prove that he’s Daredevil in an attempt to survive, or have him killed by the other inmates, which eventually include the Kingpin, also arrested for his many crimes in the process..
With Foggy acting as defense in the case, during a visit he makes to Matt at Ryker’s he’s led to an encounter with some inmates by a corrupt guard, alongside private investigator Dakota North, where Foggy is ultimately stabbed in the gut. While the reader and Matt alike are lead to believe that Foggy has indeed been killed for a few issues, Daredevil #468 revealed that, while on the operating table, Foggy made a deal with the FBI to enter witness protection as “Everett Williams,” in an attempt to keep him safe while they investigated his attempted murder.
Through a complex number of loops, Matt eventually manages to get out of prison during a riot with the help of the Punisher, is effectively exonerated in the process due to corroboration from Ryker’s warden and public evidence of Daredevil remaining in operation while Matt was held without bail (in actually Danny Rand, the Iron Fist, wearing one of Matt’s spare costumes, and inadvertently hired by a lawyer with connections to Foggy’s death). He then flees to Europe to try and track down connections to Foggy’s killer.
After even more complex shenanigans, Matt eventually uncovers that it was Vanessa Fisk—dying of a terminal illness and seeking revenge on both Murdock and her husband alike—that was behind the faking of Foggy’s death, offering him one final deal. In exchange for getting Fisk exonerated, she will destroy evidence of Matt’s operations across Europe as Daredevil, further strengthening his defense against the FBI charges. Although he initially refuses, Vanessa destroys the pictures anyway, dying days after Matt returns to the U.S. with the charges against him dropped, and discovering for himself that Foggy was alive all along, establishing a new law firm together once more with Foggy’s assistant Becky Blake as their partner.
Could Foggy Have Really Survived in Daredevil: Born Again?
For as perfect an opportunity as this particular Easter egg might play out as, there is a pretty significant difference in the way “The Devil in Cell Block D” and “Heaven’s Half Hour” portrayed Foggy’s deaths: the latter is much more explicit in presenting that Foggy dies from his wounds at the scene. In the comics, the moment of Foggy’s “death” is much more vague. At the end of the issue he’s attacked, Daredevil #82 (legacy issue #462), Matt can still hear Foggy’s heartbeat with his extrasensory abilities, and although the following issue then cuts to his funeral, we eventually learn in passing dialogue from Dakota that Foggy had appeared to stabilize in the ambulance that recovered him from Ryker’s. There’s enough vagueness in how it’s framed for the shock reveal six issues down the line to still come together.
Born Again leaves very little room for vagueness in its own rendition of Foggy’s death. Both Karen, by Foggy’s side, and Matt, using his senses from up on the rooftops above, experience the moment Foggy bleeds out, and although we don’t see much of the medical response to the scene in the aftermath, it certainly doesn’t look like there’s any attempts to stabilize him. Beyond the 468 number as a potential allusion to the comics, Born Again seems to be pretty adamant that Foggy is really gone.
That may change, of course, as the season progresses. It’s not like there haven’t been supernatural ways to cheat death in either Daredevil‘s history on Netflix or in the MCU as it exists now, that Born Again is part of. There are plenty of ways that even a really certain death could be undone, even if doesn’t play out as exactly as the switcheroo in “The Secret Life of Foggy Nelson” did. For now though, we don’t really have a lot of evidence pointing to a way out for poor Foggy in the MCU, beyond a number and a fleeting dream.
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