Daredevil alum Charlie Cox -- who played lead character Matt Murdock on the Netflix Marvel show -- says he and his co-stars were so sure the series would be renewed for a fourth season that he actually declined other acting jobs that were offered to him.
"I mean, we all thought we were going," Cox told ComicBook.com. "You know, I turned down jobs, 'cause I thought we were shooting and we were getting ready for it." Daredevil dropped its third season on Netflix in October of 2018, with news of the show's cancellation coming not long after in late November.
Evidently, the cast of Daredevil had good reason to assume the show would be coming back. As Cox tells it, he actually met with Daredevil Season 3 showrunner Erik Oleson and former Marvel Television boss Jeph Loeb to discuss the on-screen future of Matt Murdock and company. "I had a brief conversation with Erik and Jeph about what was planned and that kind of sucks, 'cause I was really excited, you know, as we all were," the actor shared. "It was a real shock. I don't know who's to blame, just, you know, because sometimes, politics, stuff happens, I probably don't to this day know what was going on behind the scenes."
However, while Cox certainly seems disappointed that Daredevil did not carry on past Season 3, he also says that sometimes a television show is better off quitting while it's ahead, lest the quality take a hit. Cox explains that one of his favorite shows in recent memory was The Leftovers, with one of the reasons he is so fond of it being that "the quality never drops. It never drops because they did three seasons and they called it a day, which takes a lot of, I don't know, courage, talent, I don't know how that happens, because, you know, when something's really good there's always a hunger for it. But, I like to think that we ended on a massive high. Some people, some friends of mine who are fans of the show, described Season 3 as our best. And, you know, I'll take that. I'd rather it be remembered as this great moment in time, that really kind of changed television, and you know, didn't descend into kind of ridiculousness."
Still, the fact that Cox turned down other offers in order to stay committed to Daredevil cannot be overstated. Show business, after all, is incredibly volatile, with Daredevil's cancellation being a testament to just how drastically one's employment status can change from one day to the next. Cox's co-star Deborah Ann Woll -- who played the character of Karen Page on the show -- even recently opened up about how difficult finding work post-Daredevil has been. That said, Cox has landed other roles, portraying Jerry in the play Betrayal opposite Thor's Tom Hiddleston and playing Will Hickey in the upcoming film Stripped.