Every Live-Action Daredevil Costume In Marvel Movies & TV Shows, Ranked

Daredevil is an iconic Marvel hero, and something that sets him apart is his wide variety of superhero costumes. Though perhaps best known for sporting an all-red, skin-tight outfit as he patrols the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, Daredevil has also worn several other ensembles, from simple black to vibrant yellow. Even within the MCU, the character’s look has significantly evolved, and that’s equally true in his earlier, pre-MCU appearances.

The simplicity of Daredevil’s comic look also makes it a bit difficult to adapt, as the plain-colored fabric doesn’t usually look as good on the screen as on the page. Different creative teams have taken different approaches to updating Matt Murdock’s outfits for the big and small screens to mixed results. While the character waits for his next appearance in the upcoming Daredevil: Born Again TV streaming series, he already has plenty of superhero suits to look back on.

6 The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk

Long before Daredevil starred in one of the best MCU TV shows, Matt Murdock appeared in 1989’s The Trial of the Incredible Hulk. The made-for-TV movie is a follow-up to The Incredible Hulk TV show that aired between 1978 and 1982 and features a team-up between Matt Murdock and Bruce Banner to take down Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin. The creatives behind the movie were smart to stick with Daredevil’s more simplistic black outfit given the budget restraints the movie was operating under, but the look still doesn’t quite work.

The suit desperately needs additional lines, details, or elements to break up the large swaths of plain black, which blend a bit too much into the background during dark scenes. The headpiece also looks a bit more odd as a tight skull cap than the tied-on look later interpretations utilized. Regardless, the suit is by no means horrible and was a landmark work in Daredevil’s journey to later, better looks.

5 Daredevil Movie Suit

The early 2000s were an important time for superhero movies as the genre started taking major steps toward the modern mainstream. However, with a few exceptions, the era is represented by confusion about how to best adapt vibrant superhero costumes to live-action. While Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies fully committed to vibrant looks right off the page, other franchises, like Fox’s X-Men series, attempted more realistic looks. Daredevil (2003) fell somewhere in the middle. Ben Affleck’s Matt Murdock is clad in a full leather suit, though it is still a fairly bright red.

The Daredevil (2003) suit deserves credit for attempting a relatively comic book-accurate look, but it simply hasn’t aged well. The thick leather looks impractical and uncomfortable to fight in, and the molded brow line on the helmet looks fine when Murdock is angry but odd anytime else. However, compared to the horrendous redesign suffered by Colin Farrell’s Bullseye in the movie, Daredevil’s outfit seems like a modest, comparative win.

4 Daredevil Season 1 Red Suit

After spending most of his time in a simple black outfit, it was incredibly exciting when Matt Murdock finally busted out his modern take on the classic suit in the Daredevil season 1 finale. Understanding that simple, seamless red fabric from head to toe doesn’t work in live-action as it does in the pages of Marvel Comics, the Daredevil season 1 red suit fuses blacks and reds and breaks up the visual design with protective paneling and visual fabric patterns. It’s not without flaws, but the suit served as a solid foundation for the improved suits that followed.

One pitfall that stops this Daredevil outfit from landing among the best superhero suits in the MCU is that, at certain angles, the headpiece looks a bit off. While it makes sense that the eye holes are small and impractical, they’re fairly low, accentuating the forehead and sometimes making it look quite large. Though it’s hard to tell in darker scenes, the front of the mask is also black instead of red, and the amount of black overall mixes with the dark shade of red used to make the suit a bit hard to read in the season’s final low-light brawl between Daredevil and Kingpin.

3 Daredevil Series Black Suit

Plenty of superhero movies and TV shows have faltered by trying to keep their character’s outfits too grounded, but Daredevil season 1 nails Matt’s first homemade suit, and he wears it for most of the season and again in Daredevil season 3. While the show’s other, flashier suits work in their own way, there’s a visceral realism to Daredevil’s simple black getup. The decision to add Muay Thai ropes around each fist is a small detail that elevates the whole look. Not only does this provide some much-needed visual contrast, but it also makes every single punch feel much more violent and brutal.

2 She-Hulk Maroon & Yellow Suit

Daredevil’s re-introduction to the MCU came through She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, where Matt Murdock crossed paths with Jennifer Walters both in the courtroom and in the realm of superheroism. Matt Murdock was given a fresh new look (that was actually given narrative justification via the show’s in-world suit designer), and it succeeds in bringing to life one of Daredevil’s more vibrant looks from Marvel Comics. In the comics, Matt’s early Daredevil suit is primarily yellow as a reference to his late father’s boxing robes. The show doesn’t make that connection, but the yellow and maroon combo works well in She-Hulk‘s lighter atmosphere. Time will tell if the look sticks.

1 Daredevil Season 2 Updated Red Suit

In Daredevil season 2, Matt Murdock gets an updated suit from his armorer after his first one is damaged. The replacement is very similar to its predecessor, but it sports some subtle differences that elevate it and make it the best live-action Daredevil suit to date. Most noticeably, almost all of the black is removed in favor of varying shades of red and maroon. More importantly, though, the headpiece fits actor Charlie Cox’s head significantly better. The molding around the eyes looks much better than the previous helmet, and the lack of triangular brow lines keeps the front a bit more sleek.

Daredevil is lucky that every live-action interpretation of the hero’s suit does something well and at least attempts to represent the character’s long and evolving visual history in the pages of Marvel Comics. The character’s look has always been a core part of reflecting Matt Murdock’s low-level superpowers and status as a street-level defender. With Daredevil: Born Again releasing sometime in 2024, it likely won’t be long until Marvel Studios reveals the next small-screen outfit for The Man Without Fear.