Meet Agent Poindexter in 'Marvel's Daredevil' Season 3

At New York Comic Con today, "Marvel's Daredevil" fans were treated to the first look at a special new video focused on a character of great significance who is getting their introduction in Season 3 on October 19 - FBI Agent Benjamin "Dex" Poindexter (played by Wilson Bethel). 

As you can see in the video, which you can watch above, Dex is an absolutely incredible marksman. In fact, he's able to do things with weapons few others can accomplish. But he has a dark side, one that Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio) is happy to exploit and use for his own means. 

As Marvel’s Head of TV and “Marvel’s Daredevil” Executive Producer Jeph Loeb put it at NYCC, “This season we’re telling an origin story for one of the more iconic characters.”

He let Wilson Bethel actually do the honors of saying the name, as Bethel declared how thrilled he was “To tell the story of how Benjamin Poindexter will ultimately become Bullseye!” – with Charlie Cox drawing a bullseye on Bethel’s forehead to celebrate the announcement. 

A clip was shown at the NYCC panel of Dex and Matt fighting inside the New York Bulletin offices (with Dex in the red costume and Matt wearing black) and suffice to say, Dex is unbelievably dangerous, as he turns one item after another into a potentially lethal weapon. 

“Marvel’s Daredevil” Executive Producer and Showrunner Erik Oleson said the intent with Dex was to show “How a normal person could end up becoming that iconic character.” We’ll see how Wilson Fisk turns somebody who could become a productive person – and indeed is a heroic FBI agent when we meet him -- “into this iconic villain.” Oleson noted Fisk “pulls a psychological manipulation on him in a way that feels real and it could actually happen.” 

Another clip shown involved how Dex and Fisk first meet, with Dex showing off his lethal skills to save Fisk’s life, after he is attacked by rivals while being moved across the city. At the time, after coldly and efficiently taking out those attacking, Sex declares to Fisk, “Don’t move, convict!” Bethel promised however that the Fisk/Dex dynamic “gets very, very weird.” 

As Vincent D’Onofrio put it, Fisk, “Notices a thread of disease in a certain person and he pulls on that thread.  And he knows if he pulls hard enough, he will get what he wants, and that is Vanessa back in his life. And once he has her, he is defined. He is complete.” Of course, there is the problem of Daredevil, or as D’Onofrio described it, “And then there is a little gnat that bothers him…”

Discussing other elements of Season 3, Charlie Cox joked that when he first took on the role, he assumed, “We were meeting a man who was really at rock bottom,” only to see things get worse and worse for Matt. Now, going into Season 3, Cox said Matt is, “I hope, at an all-time low,” but that he was excited because, “We get to really enjoy through the story of Season 3 a process of convalescence - not just physically, but mentally.” A big part of that convalescence is Sister Maggie, played by Joanne Whalley. 

A scene was shown between the two where we learn Maggie was one of the nuns who helped raised Matt in an orphanage and that she has figured out he is the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. The two discuss just how badly Matt has been hurt from the events of "Marvel's The Defenders" – he notes he is now deaf in one ear, among many other injuries – and that it doesn’t seem he will ever be Daredevil again. However, Maggie is optimistic he can get back on his feet and asks if there’s anyone she can contact. Says Matt, “No, there is no one.” 

Oleson said he was always a fan of dramas that “Treat every single character like the hero of their own story.” He noted that when it came to the supporting cast, “Every single character sitting on stage plays an integral part. You can’t pull a single character out without it all falling apart.” He said he wanted to show in Season 3 how you fight fear, and that included, “The power of a free press, the power of law, and the power of collective action and friendship.” 

A clip showed Karen going to see Foggy, telling him she believes reports of a black-masked vigilante are Matt. Foggy insists it can’t be Matt and that Matt is gone and that if Matt were alive, he would have contacted them. Karen tells Foggy not only does she think Matt is alive, but Foggy must too, even if he won’t admit it, because he keeps saying “gone,” not “dead."

Elden Henson said that in Season 3, we find Foggy “trying to figure out who he is without Matt, without his best friend” and noted that we get to meet some of Foggy’s family this year.  As for Karen, Deborah Ann Woll said that when it comes to Matt, “There’s a lot of guilt there and a feeling of things unresolved. Karen’s never really had a home as far as we’ve known on this series.” She said Karen is feeling very adrift, and “If I allowed myself to believe [Matt] was gone, the alternative is too much to take.”  

Jay Ali laughed that his new character, Rahul "Ray" Nadeem, is “put in charge of Wilson Fisk and it goes really well.” 

We were shown a clip of Ray meeting with Fisk in prison. When Fisk asks Ray about his family, Ray asks if he’s being threatened, only for Fisk to tell Ray that while he accepts he has to pay his debt, he won’t accept that Vanessa has also been targeted. The clip ends with Fisk telling Ray he wants to make a deal. 

Discussing the beloved fight scenes in “Marvel’s Daredevil” and how he approached them in Season 3, Oleson said, “I wanted the action scenes to have stakes and to be unpredictable. I wanted Matt Murdock to occasionally lose a fight and for there to be consequences for that.” 

He then asked the audience, “You liked the hallway fight in Season 1?” When the crowd responded with big cheers, he replied, with a grin, “Yeah, we topped that.” 

Oleson said in Season 3, “There is a sequence which I was not sure we were going to be able to pull off.” In fact, he had to contact Loeb and others for “Permission to stop filming for a day just so the crew could rehearse an action sequence of one take.” 

“Marvel’s Daredevil” Season 3 premieres Friday, October 19th on Netflix!

Make sure to follow @Daredevil on Twitter and like “Marvel’s Daredevil” on Facebook, and check out Marvel.com's "Marvel's Daredevil" section for more about the Man Without Fear!