This article contains spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again season 2 episode 6.
Early in episode six of Daredevil: Born Again‘s second season, we’re confronted with what could have been the most upsetting moment in a brutal season of television. A vehicle full of armed thugs rolls up on a suburban house, and throws a grenade through the window… which gets picked up by an adorable little girl in a fairy princess costume.
What follows is delightful and unexpected. The camera stays on the little girl playing with the object of destruction while the soldiers get pummeled by some unseen force outside. When the carnage ends, we see the source of the pummeling, the little girl’s mother, Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter). Had we known this was Jessica’s house, we wouldn’t have worried about the little girl—not so much because she’s the daughter of Jessica Jones, but because she is Captain America. Or, well, she will be.
One of the last pages of 2006’s The Pulse #13, written by Brian Michael Bendis and penciled by Michael Gaydos shows the font page of the Daily Globe, with a headline that declares, “Avengers Baby Born.” Much to the chagrin of J. Jonah Jameson, whose own Daily Bugle has a headline about Spider-Man being a menace, it’s a great headline, and not just because the baby’s father is Luke Cage, then leader of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. It’s because the baby comes into the world surrounded by Avengers, including Iron Man, Captain Marvel (then using the moniker Warbird), and Captain America.
It’s also fitting because that child, Dani Cage, lives a life immersed in superheroes. She gets kidnapped in the Skrulls’ Secret Invasion, she’s threatened by Jessica’s arch-enemy the Purple Man, and she has the unbeatable Squirrel Girl as a nanny. More importantly, Danielle Cage grows up to be Captain America.
In the 2015 event Ultron Forever by Al Ewing and Alan Davis, a team of Avengers from across time are assembled by Doctor Doom to do battle with Ultron, who has supplanted Odin as the new All-Father. In addition to the current-day Black Widow and Vision, the team includes the future Captain America, Danielle Cage. In a later story, Danielle pursues her arch-enemy, the Golden Skull, to the present, where she fights alongside the U.S.Avengers, the weird off-shoot team led by Bobby da Costa a.k.a. Sunspot of the New Mutants.
While Luke Cage was indeed a one-time leader of the Avengers, he’s not often counted among Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, nor is Jessica. And yet, their daughter more than makes up for lost time. Danielle is a true believer in heroic principles, given to declarations such as, “I am the shield!”
Dani’s exuberant embrace of the Captain America legacy represents a break from most futuristic stories. In stories such as Earth X, The Last Avengers Story, or even the recent Avengers: Twilight, Captain America is broken and disillusioned, no longer able to hold onto the dream, overwhelmed by the awful state of the world around him. But when Dani took on the mantle, she did so believing that the world could be a better place… and that she had the power to make it happen.
That perspective makes her debut in Daredevil: Born Again so notable. Viewers first meet Dani at a dark moment in the heroes’ lives, with Wilson Fisk using his position as Mayor of New York City to send his Anti-Vigilante Task Force on the city. So violent are these people that they’re willing to attack a mother at home and throw grenades at little girls.
This world needs something to believe in. As we saw in Born Again, Daredevil and Jessica are trying to rekindle hope. But the greatest hope might be in the future, in a little girl who carries a princess wand today but might tomorrow carry the shield.
Daredevil: Born Again releases new episodes every Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET on Disney+.
