Matthew Lillard's Daredevil: Born Again Character Fills A Need The MCU Has Had For Years
by Devin Meenan · /FilmSpoilers for "Daredevil: Born Again" Season 2 follow.
While "Daredevil: Born Again" sees Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio) being elected mayor of New York City, the Kingpin of Crime still doesn't rule the city alone. Season 2 features Fisk butting heads with Governor Marge McCaffrey (Lili Taylor), while another power broker hangs in the background: Mr. Charles, a CIA spook who speaks for Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).
"Born Again" Season 2 opens with Daredevil capsizing a cargo ship in New York City's East River, because Fisk was using it to smuggle assault weapons on behalf of the CIA. Mr. Charles arrives to oversee the agency's investment; he's the rare man who's brave enough to taunt Wilson Fisk.
The closing episodes of Season 2 reveal that Charles is also involved with spearheading superhuman military operations across the globe. He strikes a deal with Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) to bring her husband Luke Cage (Mike Colter) home, because he has a new living weapon: Bullseye (Wilson Bethel). That sets up Mr. Charles to return in "Born Again" Season 3, but Marvel Studios would be foolish to keep an actor of Lillard's talents in a limited role.
"Mr. Charles" is not this character's real name, but here's a guess of what it could be: Henry Peter Gyrich. An archetypal "obstructive bureaucrat," Gyrich shows up whenever a Marvel comic needs a government agent to give superheroes a hard time.
Granted, "Born Again" has shown it can and will create original characters. I once speculated Daniel Blake (Michael Gandolfini) might be one of Wilson Fisk's sons from the comics, Richard Fisk or Byron "Butch" Fisk, but he wasn't. Even if Mr. Charles isn't literally Gyrich, he could still fill Gyrich's usual role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe going forward.
Could Mr. Charles be the MCU's Henry Gyrich?
Henry Gyrich debuted in "The Avengers" #165 in 1977, created by the late Jim Shooter and artist John Byrne. He works for the National Security Agency (NSA) and is assigned as official government liaison to the Avengers, before trying to dictate the team's line-up. Shooter and Byrne both leaned conservative, and Gyrich feels conceived out of the "government [interference] is the problem" sentiment that would blossom in Ronald Reagan's 1980s.
Gyrich is also a persistent annoyance for the X-Men. No surprise a pencil-pushing authoritarian like him hates mutants and advocates to control them. In the 1992 "X-Men" cartoon, he appeared as a supporter of the Sentinel (mutant hunting robots) program. Gyrich returned in "X-Men '97" as part of Bastion's (Theo James) Operation Zero Tolerance for mutant enslavement, but wound up being killed by Bastion himself. In 2021's "S.W.O.R.D." #11 by Al Ewing and Jacopo Camagni (one of the best comics from the X-Men's Krakoa era), it's similarly easy to feel satisfied when Abigail Brand tosses Gyrich out of an airlock.
Henry Guyrich (Matthew Sharp) appeared in the 2000 "X-Men" movie, but he was a mere Senate aide to Robert Kelly (Bruce Davison) and was swiftly murdered by Sabretooth (Tyler Mane). Mr. Charles presents the MCU a chance to do a truer Gyrich. The main difference is that Gyrich is a stuffed shirt, whereas Mr. Charles is a grinning trickster. (Speaking to EW, Matthew Lillard compared him to the Cheshire Cat.) But both love lording their power over people, and Mr. Charles rocks a pair of glasses similar to Gyrich's classic look.
The MCU might have found its Henry Gyrich — it just needs to give him the name.
"Daredevil: Born Again" is streaming on Disney+.