Credit: Marvel StudiosThe canonical status of the Marvel Netflix series has been unclear for a long time now, but Samuel L Jackson just helped out Daredevil by reinforcing that the world of Nick Fury includes aspects of that show.
Sharp-eyed viewers of Samuel L Jackson’s new Disney Plus series Secret Invasion noticed that a news program on the terrorist bombing of Vossoyedineniye Square (also known as the Unity Day Bombing) was broadcast by a network named FXN News, presumably a nod to the real-world FOX News.
Daredevil fans quickly put it together that FXN News had previously appeared in the Netflix series in season 3, when Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) is interviewed by a crowd of reporters about a number of killings presumed to have been committed by Daredevil, but were actually the work of Bullseye (Wilson Bethel) at the behest of Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio).
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You can see the same FXN News logo on a microphone to the right of Karen Page as she walks:
Matt Murdock Exists in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but Which One?
It was established in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) that Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil, exists in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, played by a returning Charlie Cox. The Disney Plus series Hawkeye (2021) went further and revealed that Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin, also exists, but, if anything, that just confused things.
While the appearance and identities of Daredevil and Wilson Fisk were the same, there were enough differences between the Marvel Netflix show and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (for example, DD’s costume and Kingpin’s seeming superpowers) that it is now unclear whether they are actually the same characters.
Given that Marvel has been going all-in on the Multiverse concept in which an infinite variety of every single person exists, it is entirely possible (or even probable) that the Netflix characters introduced to the MCU proper are variants rather than the exact people.
‘Secret Invasion’ Confirms a Small Detail
While one could argue that multiple realities within the Marvel Cinematic Universe have some variant of FXN News, the network’s appearance in Secret Invasion is a small confirmation that the Netflix shows are indeed canon.
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The debates over which reality different characters come from will undoubtedly rage on as long as the MCU exists, but sometimes it is nice to get a little bit of backup on something like that.
Charlie Cox will return as Matt Murdock in the upcoming Daredevil: Born Again (as long as WGA strike negotiations go well, anyway), so we hopefully might get a little bit more closure in the future. Until then, thanks, Samuel L Jackson.