Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev's Daredevil run had a brilliant surprise ending, with Matt Murdock under arrest and deliberately left in a precarious position. The next creative team, writer Ed Brubaker and artist Michael Lark, agreed to start with Matt’s radically altered status quo as a prisoner at Ryker’s Island. However, their debut issue also depicted Daredevil fighting crime back in Hell’s Kitchen. But what was really going on, and who was behind the Daredevil mask?
Marvel was undergoing a lot of world-building during the mid-2000s, and the imposter Daredevil plot thread was immediately picked up on in other titles. In a Civil War crossover, Captain America's Secret Avengers recruited the new Daredevil onto the team, and in Civil War #5, the new Man Without Fear had a noteworthy exchange with Tony Stark in which he criticized Iron Man's support for superhero registration. While the character featured in many other Marvel crossovers, no one touched upon this Daredevil's true identity, and it was therefore left to Brubaker and Lark to resolve this intriguing mystery.
The Build-Up to the New Daredevil's Unmasking
For a while, Matt Murdock was unaware of another Daredevil taking over his duties in Hell's Kitchen. Brubaker and Lark were more interested in pushing Matt to the limit in prison, where he became mixed up with Kingpin and the Punisher. Brubaker's background writing crime noir fueled many of the storylines that unfolded over the course of the run, as Matt later traveled to Europe to solve a conspiracy against himself and his longtime law partner, Foggy Nelson. But what about the imposter Daredevil? Who was the man behind the mask?
Once Matt Murdock got out of prison, he exchanged blows with the latest version of Daredevil in a classic case of misunderstanding. The imposter was soon revealed to be Matt's ally Iron Fist, who unilaterially decided to assume the identity. Despite all the build-up, in a 2006 interview with Newsarama Brubaker revealed that he never intended the unmasking to be quite as dramatic as it turned out to be. And while he found the reaction interesting and even fun, he also said it was "a little nerve-wracking" to have the story exacerbated on such a massive scale.
Iron Fist was a Great Replacement for Matt Murdock's Daredevil
It's easy to understand why Danny Rand took on the mantle of the Man Without Fear, at least from a creative and marketing standpoint. Simply put, Brubaker was fond of the character. When asked about Iron Fist in a 2012 interview with IGN, Brubaker (alongside Matt Fraction) said: "He was a longtime favorite of mine, but he'd never been that popular, and I always thought there was something really special about him." The inclusion of Iron Fist therefore became a creative way to reintroduce the character, and set him up for his own ongoing series that launched in 2006.
Danny's adoption of the Daredevil identity also makes sense from a narrative perspective. Someone had to protect Hell's Kitchen in Matt's absence, and who would be better than another street-level hero with martial-arts prowess? Danny's masquerade also cast doubt that Matt and Daredevil were the same person. It even opened the door for a future adaptation, with Netflix's Defenders teasing the possibility of Danny becoming the next protector of Hell's Kitchen after Daredevil was believed to be dead. However, the idea was never developed, and Daredevil's third season never returned to that aspect of Matt Murdock's story.