Once Wilson Bethel was announced as ‘Benjamin Poindexter‘ for Daredevil ‘s upcoming third Netflix season, comic book fans immediately recognized the given name of a famed Marvel villain — Bullseye.
Once played by Colin Farrell in 2003’s Ben Affleck Daredevil vessel, Bethel’s role is of an FBI agent whose dark secrets are granted full potential by underworld kingpin Wilson Fisk. You can believe the Daredevil cast and creators had plenty to say about what viewers can expect from Bullseye’s emergence. From Bethel’s own mouth, audiences should be excited.
From The Man Behind The Crosshairs
Wilson Bethel (Benjamin Poindexter): “I don’t think you have to wait until late in the season. By episode six everything should be pretty clear. I think this will be a very satisfying season of the show for a lot of reasons, many of which have nothing to do with new characters, but the role that I play will be very fun for fans. It’s in the service of a well filled-out character. A character who feels real.
“As somebody who watched and enjoyed the first two seasons of the show, the way that they’re exploring the backstories of other characters this season is very cool. Both for Karen, Foggy, and then [Poindexter]. Specifically, in Episode Five, Erik Oleson came up with a creative concept for the framing of my backstory. It’s a fascinating artistic choice — I haven’t seen it yet — but I remember reading it on the page, and it is very different, very exciting.”
How To Make A Monster
Vincent D’Onofrio (Wilson Fisk): “It’s important that Poindexter becomes the worst part of himself. The city needs somebody to hate more than they hate Wilson Fisk. [Poindexter] can be that. It’s important that Fisk pulls the worst out of ‘Dex.’ It’s pivotal to my character and taking the city back over.”
Jay Ali (Ray Nadeem): “When it comes to Poindexter, Wilson Fisk makes it feel like he’s helping you. He’s doing something for you. That’s what the best manipulators do, don’t they? They find your weakness and make you feel like they can help. For Poindexter, Fisk is like his new father figure.”
Finding The Right Time To Pull The Trigger
Jeph Loeb (Producer): “[The inclusion of Bullseye is] a choice that begins on our side of the table concerning which characters we want to use and the story we’d like to tell. It never is done in a way where we say, ‘Here’s the toy, figure out the best way to use it.’ If Erik [Oleson] had come back to us and said, ‘I’ve been thinking about it, and I want to tell [Season 3] just with Wilson Fisk,’ we would’ve said, ‘Okay. We’ll find another place to tell [Bullseye’s] story.’ I’ll give you a perfect example, which is, Typhoid Mary started as a Daredevil character and is tied intrinsically to Matt Murdock, and that may be a story that we tell someday, but we decided that it would be interesting to tell that story over at Iron Fist. To see how that would work out because she’s such a strong, iconic character. So, there’s a world where [Bullseye] could’ve turned up anyplace else.”
Erik Oleson (Showrunner): “I think in this season, we very much needed a physical threat to Matt in addition to the Machiavellian plottings of Wilson Fisk. Fisk is very much a spymaster this season, using every play out of the book of Vladimir Putin, you know? And, being able to bring this iconic character onto the show to tell a really deep and rich origin story was a dream come true. Like, ‘Really? I get to do that? Okay, yes I will do that,’ I think people will dig [Bullseye].”
Daredevil Season Three hits Netflix on October 19, 2018.
