I Have Questions About Matthew Lillard's 'Mr. Charles' After Daredevil: Born Again's Season 2 First Look

With the critically acclaimed Wonder Man serving as the first upcoming Marvel series to hit the 2026 TV schedule, fans won’t have to wait too long for Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 to make its streaming debut (via Disney+ subscription). The studio finally dropped our first major look at the new season, and the teaser-trailer reveals Jessica Jones’ return, a few unnerving shots of smiling Bullseye, a surprisingly Foggy flashback, and the long-awaited arrival of Matthew Lillard’s MCU debut.

Lillard knows a little something about role secrecy, coming off of security-ridden turns in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 and the upcoming horror movie Scream 7. Sadly, fans will still be waiting a while yet to learn more about his mysterious character “Mr. Charles,” since the footage didn’t exactly lay out his full biography. But I have a few questions to throw out into the ethers now that we’ve at least seen him in this world, along with all the other new Season 2 shots.

Is Mr. Charles Even His Real Name?

Any time a high-profile new character is introduced with just a first name and an honorific, I’m going to be slightly suspicious that the moniker is an alias that’s shielding an even more exciting reveal coming down the pipeline. That’s absolutely the case here, since no one in Daredevil: Born Again would have a reason to only refer to this man as “Mr. Charles,” unless it’s more of a heightened persona such as Daredevil or Kingpin.

Fans have thrown out plenty of guesses for who Lillard’s character could end up being, though his “no lycra” comments limit those guesses to non-costumed entities. Given the “Charles” of it all, combined with the upcoming MCU X-Men movie, Professor X has definitely come up, though that would require some wild storytelling skills to work around Patrick Stewart’s return for Avengers: Doomsday, and I doubt Marvel would bring him to Hell’s Kitchen under these circumstances. So my money is on the name being totally phony.

Whose Side Is Mr. Charles Actually On?

While details are fleeting, Mr. Charles is described as being a political antagonist, specifically an adversary to Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk, with Matthew Lillard saying he’s someone “completely new to Hell's Kitchen.” But even if we take that with a grain of salt and assume that he is indeed an anti-Fisk individual, that’s not exactly irrefutable proof that he and Matt Murdock would see eye to eye, or whatever idiom is best used here. In the same way that vigilante justice isn’t aligned with local or federal authorities, Mr. Charles may be on his own side of the law here without any allies.

He doesn’t appear to be wearing an official uniform of any kind in the teaser, and he also doesn’t appear to be entirely alone in whatever setting he’s in. That doesn’t prove anything, of course, but sets up entirely different expectations than seeing him sitting in a massive chair in a lush office smiling wickedly. Personally, I only want Lillard to play a villain when he can chew the shit out of the scenery, so if there’s no room for that here, I hope Mr. Charles and Matt are on equal and agreeable footing.

Is Matthew Lillard Behind That Disturbing Kingpin Mask?

One of the most baffling images to pop up in the new teaser is the above shot of someone dressed up as a caricature of Wilson Fisk, making keen use of his less affirmational comic book alias. It's hard to tell what we're even looking at here. Is it an average-sized adult wearing a mask and suit? Is it more of a smaller-sized puppet being controlled by others? Or could it even be an image generated by AI within the context of the show's plotline? More importantly, though, is Mr. Charles responsible?

Given the similar 4:3 perspective ratio, it appears as if this Kingpin figure is connected to whatever signal frequency suddenly sends Matt into a pained frenzy. Fans quickly picked up on how similar it looks to the infamous Max Headroom broadcast hijacking in 1987, so it's certainly possible that more than just a visual message will be imparted to those watching. Although I'm more inclined to believe that imagery doesn't actually show up on any TVs in the real world, and is actually just inside Daredevil's head. (I fully buy into Matt only thinking of TV in pre-16:9 formatting.)

In fact, one could even speculate that Matthew Lillard specified not wearing lycra to throw fans off, only to reveal that he did get into costume for Daredevil: Born Again, even if it isn't the most traditional get-up. Even if he didn't don the mask, however, I'd still suspect Mr. Charles of being the one behind it.

Hopefully we won't need to wait until the final episode of Season 2 to get answers about who Lillard's character is. But we'll definitely have to stay patient until the first episode gets here. At least we now know that Daredevil: Born Again will be back in our lives on March 24, 2026.