Elektra's Return In Daredevil Season 3 Could Set Up A Killer Twist
With Matt Murdock in prison, will the Woman Without Fear patrol the neighborhood in his stead?
Romance has always been a part of superhero comics. In fact, some famous couples have influenced more comic book lore than any supervillains. Famous couples include: Superman and Lois Lane, Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson, and Batman and Catwoman. But there’s another couple — perhaps lesser-known but just as enduring on the page — who have made an unforgettable imprint on each other’s lives, through both the passionate highs and volatile, deadly lows: Daredevil and Elektra.
Introduced 17 years after the Man Without Fear’s debut in 1964, Elektra arrived on the scene a little later than some of her other superhero love interest counterparts, but then again, everything about her was a radical shift from how love interests and women at large were written in comics at that point. Created by Frank Miller in his seminal 80s run on Daredevil, Elektra was sensual and ruthless in a way that wasn’t common, with a bloodlust and moral flexibility that ran counter to Matt Murdock’s rigid code and the anger he suppresses within himself. Despite her status as one of the most revered antiheroes in comics, she’s only been adapted twice: once by Jennifer Garner in 2003’s Daredevil and its critically reviled spin-off Elektra, and again by Élodie Yung, who brought her to life in the original Daredevil Netflix series. Now, just like the character’s comic book history, Yung’s Elektra has been resurrected for season 3 of Daredevil: Born Again – which just might adapt a pretty recent and major status quo change for the character.
Elodie Yung as Elektra is seen filming at the "Daredevil: Born Again" set in Dumbo, Brooklyn on June 23, 2026 in New York City
New photos from the set of the third season revealed the return of Yung in the role, sporting a slightly redesigned version of her costume from the original show. The last time we saw her was in 2017’s The Defenders miniseries, which ended with Daredevil choosing to stay behind with her as a building collapsed around them, a desperate attempt to coax her back to her original life and memories after she was resurrected, brainwashed, and weaponized by the sinister ninja clan The Hand. Murdock survived and went on to have even more problems of his own, problems which inevitably escalated with the mayoral election of his archnemesis Wilson Fisk in the Born Again revival, a citywide crisis that eventually required the reveal of Matt Murdock’s secret identity and his resulting imprisonment to rectify.
The ending of Born Again season 2 isn’t the first time the character has ended up behind bars: it’s happened twice before, once in Brian Michael Bendis’ early 2000s run on the character, and most recently in Chip Zdarsky’s four-year arc that started in 2019. In that storyline (which Born Again has already cribbed from), Murdock’s time in prison corresponds with a rise in crime on the outside under the eye of Mayor Fisk, a problem that’s partially alleviated by the intervention of Elektra, who proposes a simple and radical solution: that she become Daredevil in his stead.
Elektra taking over the mantle of Daredevil is arguably the most interesting status quo change Marvel has given the character in years.
In Zdarksy’s run, Elektra’s time as Daredevil eventually softens her killer instincts and begins to walk a redemptive path, a path that leads to her marriage to Murdock and their leadership of The Fist, a rival clan to The Hand – all of it culminates in a finale that drags Matt to literal Hell to finally defeat their common enemy. Since then, Murdock has returned to the land of the living and once again taken up the mantle, but Elektra still currently operates as the Woman Without Fear, just recently serving as a member of a supernatural-based team named the Savage Avengers.
It’s certainly not likely that the third season of Daredevil: Born Again will follow in the exact same footsteps of Zdarsky’s run and the fallout of it, but considering his current predicament and the sudden reappearance of his blazing old flame in his life, it seems entirely plausible that Charlie Cox’s Daredevil might end up making a similar decision to his comic book counterpart. The end of season 2 of the original Netflix show saw Elektra start to choose the light before her death and subsequent resurrection, but her time as The Hand’s assassin certainly resulted in some spilled blood she needs to atone for. Knowing Matt’s penchant for playing by the rules, it’s not likely that she’ll simply break him out of prison early, but protecting Hell’s Kitchen in his stead (and slowly unlearning the compulsion for murder trained into her from a young age) might just be the perfect solution to his problems and her redemption.
Another point towards this theory is that, minus the mask, Elektra’s Daredevil costume resembles the one seen in set photos.
Of course, whenever Elektra appears, The Hand can’t be far behind, which makes the timing interesting considering the fact that the ancient organization is already set to appear in the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day (doubly ironic when factoring in the presence of the Punisher in the film, who debuted in the same season of Netflix’s Daredevil as Elektra). No matter what the MCU has planned for the couple next, be it evil ninjas or a shift in labels, it’s exciting to see Élodie Yung’s Elektra return to the screen, because there’s so much more to be explored within the dynamic of arguably the most complex and psychologically fraught relationships in comics.
