The face behind the mask: How Daredevil: Born Again exposes our curated personas

Disclaimer: This article explores Daredevil: Born Again and the X-Men through the lens of psychology and Marvel lore.

Jung’s concept of the persona—the mask we wear to fit in—mirrors the struggle of heroes and villains who shape, suppress, or lose themselves in their identities.

Matt Murdock lives between versions of himself. Wilson Fisk rewrites his own history. The X-Men fight against a world that dictates who they are.

This isn’t a clinical analysis but an exploration of how Marvel’s stories reflect the way we craft, curate, and sometimes lose control of the faces we show the world.

---

Daredevil: Born Again isn’t just about masked vigilantes. It’s about identity, about the fragile line between who we are and who we want to be seen as. Everyone wears a mask, not just the kind that hides your face, but the kind that hides who you really are.

We wear them at work, at home, in front of friends, in front of strangers, and even when we’re alone. We curate every detail of how we present ourselves, filter our flaws, adjust the lighting, smooth the edges, and pretend we’re in control of the story we tell.

But what happens when the mask stops being something we put on and becomes something we can’t take off?

That’s the question Daredevil: Born Again asks, and the answer isn’t comfortable.

Matt Murdock isn’t just struggling with his identity as Daredevil. He’s losing his grip on who he is underneath it all. The man, the lawyer, the vigilante, the believer. Everything is cracking at the seams, and the version of himself that he spent years constructing is slipping through his fingers.

And he’s not the only one trapped in a performance.

"I’ve been thinking a lot about projected personas. How we present a curated version of ourselves, like through filters on social media or masks." — Dr. Heather Glenn

Dr. Heather Glenn’s words cut through the noise because they aren’t just about Matt, they’re about all of us. We build these versions of ourselves every day, tweaking and refining, making sure the world sees only what we want it to see. We erase the messy parts, frame our stories in just the right light, and filter out the chaos. But after a while, the version we create starts looking more real than the one we buried beneath it.

And that’s dangerous.

---

Matt Murdock and the weight of a double life

Matt has always existed in the space between who he is and who he needs to be. A lawyer by day, a vigilante by night, a man of faith caught in an endless moral war with himself. But Daredevil: Born Again makes one thing painfully clear. This balancing act is no longer sustainable. He isn’t just playing two roles. He’s losing both.

And then there’s Wilson Fisk, who understands the game better than anyone. His assistant spells it out in plain words:

"These first few days are critical. Optics are gonna matter."

It’s not about truth. It’s about perception. Fisk doesn’t need to be redeemed. He just needs people to believe he is. He carefully reconstructs his image, rewriting history as he goes. If the world sees him as a changed man, then doesn’t that, in some way, make it true?

If you tell a lie long enough, do you start to believe it yourself?

And that’s where Daredevil: Born Again starts to blur the line between fiction and reality, between superheroes and the world we live in.

Because this isn’t just about Matt or Fisk.

The illusion of control: from masks to mutant metaphors

Marvel has been playing with this idea for decades. The X-Men’s struggle has always been about perception, about how the world sees them versus who they really are. The Mutant Registration Act, the Sentinels, the propaganda that turns them into the enemy. It’s all about controlling the narrative, curating reality until the mask becomes the truth.

And that’s exactly what’s going on in Daredevil: Born Again.

Matt isn’t just dealing with his personal identity crisis. The world around him is redefining who Matt Murdock is (or is not).

Vigilantes are being pushed into the same role that mutants have played for years. The other. The threat. The ones who need to be monitored, controlled, erased.

Isn’t that what we do every single day of our lives?

We police our own images. In order to be safe, we adopt personas that make us seem more likeable, acceptable, or in line with our most secure self-image.

Fisk changes his own past with the deft touch of an expert manipulator, and he does it on a massive scale.

Matt is an ongoing mess trying to hold up.

Lost his best friend.

Losing Karen.

Losing his faith. His temper...

Like them, we wear maks, even if we do so in more subtle, invisible ways. We filter out the anger, the fear, the exhaustion, and present the version of ourselves that the world expects. Only sometimes? We don't.

We tell ourselves (and others) stories. We edit out the parts we don’t like. We shrink ourselves down, build ourselves up, filter out the messy bits, and play the roles we think will keep us safe.

Matt does it. Fisk does it. Even BB does it, twisting himself into whatever shape he thinks will keep him from drowning. And eventually, the mask becomes the face.

What happens when the illusion cracks?

There’s a reason why the X-Men and Daredevil stories keep returning to the idea of masks, of personas, of what happens when the world forces you into a role you didn’t choose.

There’s a reason Matt Murdock keeps losing himself in Daredevil, why Fisk can’t stop rewriting his own past, why every hero who wears a mask eventually has to ask themselves whether the person underneath even exists anymore.

Because at some point, the act stops being an act. At some point, the version we create takes over.

And when that happens, when that illusion shatters, when the mask is gone and there’s nothing left to hide behind, what do we do?

Maybe Daredevil: Born Again isn’t just about redemption.

Maybe it’s about the terrifying moment when the performance ends and all that’s left is the truth.