Spoiler alert: This article contains major spoilers for season 2, episode 7 of Daredevil: Born Again, now available on Disney+.
Daredevil: Born Again sees another major character get killed off, but the fatal murder scene was originally filmed with a much happier ending. It wasn’t until after filming that showrunner Dario Scardapain decided to change tack and add some post-production special effects to nail one of Kingpin/Mayor Wilson Fisk’s (Vincent D’Onofrio) closest allies.
Kingpin enforcer Buck Cashman (Artie Frushian) shockingly kills Deputy Mayor Daniel Blake (Michael Gandolfini) during a confrontation between Fisk’s two right-hand men. Cashman wants journalist BB Urich (Jenya Walton) to be executed for leaking the Kingpin’s evil plans to the world, but Blake is unable to kill her because the two have become close. Blake decides to rebel against Cashman and protect Urich, but his good deed becomes his undoing. Near the end of the penultimate episode, Cashman confronts Blake about Urich, pushes him to the ground and shoots him after a scuffle.
However, this was not the case during filming.
As the actors filmed the scene, Cashman pointed the gun at Blake, who was on the ground, but did not pull the trigger. He helps the young politician and tells him to escape, but later has to explain what happened to the Kingpin.
“Buck had to stand up to Fisk and he wouldn’t approve of it,” Fruthian told Variety. “He basically lies to Fisk’s face and says, ‘I killed him,’ which obviously isn’t the case.”
Skuldapain also revealed what would have happened if Blake had survived the deadly encounter, as originally filmed. “That would have been the case had he remained in the Fisk administration,” he says. “When he tenders his resignation, the new interim mayor is like, ‘I’m not going to accept your resignation. I don’t trust you, so I’m going to keep you close.'”
In deciding to keep Blake alive in the first place, Skuldapain explained that the character was “given chance after chance and paid a price for protecting BB. And that tainted Buck’s soul.” But then in the editing room, the showrunners realized “this is so wrong” and that “I don’t think we got the story.”
Later, the showrunners said that keeping Blake alive was “in some ways a boring story…Sometimes the story is built in and stretched out a little too much. Wait a minute. He and Buck both had to stay true to themselves in their twisted friendship. That was the final moment, because everything that followed seemed like a weird, boring coda that didn’t pay off.”
Scardapene called Gandolfini and explained the decision to change the scene and kill off his character.
“I was like, ‘Hey, I just learned the worst news,'” Skardapan says. “And he said, ‘I know exactly what you mean, and it’s the right choice.’ At that moment, he felt like he couldn’t get out of this apartment. It was funny because his scenes were being filmed after that moment, and here he was. I really felt like we were telling the wrong story. I think this is a testament to how much we all love him, and we knew this character probably shouldn’t survive, but we just couldn’t bring ourselves to do it.”
So the post-production team added gunshots to the final confrontation between Cashman and Blake. “In the editing room, we’re like, ‘We should try this,'” Skardapan says. “They mocked it up really quickly, and then you could have heard a pin drop in the editing room. It’s like the end of the episode. It’s really bad.”
Cashman and Blake’s scene ended with a gunshot, shocking fans as Season 1’s other main character disappeared from the board.
“The fact that we, as actors, didn’t know this was going to happen probably makes this scene even more compelling,” Fruchan says. “I love Michael Gandolfini like a brother. This season, our entire journey together is a movie. So I was disappointed. I was really upset. But I think it raised the stakes of the story in a really exciting way that probably needed that storyline.”
Antonio Ferme contributed reporting.
