Something has shifted ever since Zohran Mamdani was officially declared the mayor-elect of New York City. Many have felt a new sense of hope in the air, which has been expressed online by basically every kind of meme that one could imagine.
Part of the online chatter has even made its way into the Marvel fandom… for a reason that is oddly fitting. A tweet of Mamdani’s from the summer of 2015 has revealed that he, at the time, was watching Netflix’s live-action Daredevil series. At very least, he liked the show enough to tweet about it, writing “Shoutouts to the main man @ShaunKing for putting me on to @Daredevil.”
A number of Mamdani’s old tweets have resurfaced in the wake of his win, in part because people are reveling in the fact that a millennial with an online history is taking on such a major political role, and in part because what he tweeted about was largely so wholesome. (I haven’t seen something quite like this since Swifties discovered Travis Kelce’s feelings about squirrels and MGMT’s 2008 hit song “Electric Feel.”) But this Daredevil tweet has caught a particular amount of attention among Marvel fans, who are thankful to discover that the new mayor-elect “knows ball.”
The Mayor Without Fear?
This isn’t the first time that Mamdani has expressed his feelings towards incredibly specific pieces of pop culture, previously sharing his love towards the 4DX version of Twisters and even Taylor Swift’s 2020 political anthem “Only the Young.” But his old Daredevil tweet resurfacing is especially poetic, given the similarities that have been pointed out (facetiously or otherwise) between the real-life election and the events of the show and its Disney+ revival, Daredevil: Born Again. It’s not just that Mamdani does look shockingly like Matt Murdock actor Charlie Cox — it’s that the entire grassroots sentiment of his campaign has felt similar to how Matt fights for justice on the show.
A viral fancam by TikTok user @qsmpbolter, set to Lorde’s “David”, illustrates this better than I could probably explain it. It splices together footage of Mamdani and Cox’s Matt Murdock, as well as their respective rivals, Andrew Cuomo and Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk / Kingpin. On paper, it’s a silly connection… but as the song builds, it makes you see the similarities in both of their crusades. It also, honestly, makes you realize just how much fighting Matt still has left to do in Season 2 of Born Again, now that Fisk violently declared martial law at the end of the show’s first season.
While it’s safe to assume that Mamdani is going to be very busy for the foreseeable future, the resurgence of this old Daredevil tweet of his does raise some questions that would be fun to see answered. Has he seen Born Again, and even Matt’s earlier Disney+ appearance in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law? If so, how does he feel about Foggy Nelson’s apparent demise? Does he, like a lot of us, also quote Kingpin’s “you embarrassed me in front of Vanessa” meme? Also, as one TikTok comment on that “David” fancam pointed out: does this mean that Curtis Sliwa is the Frank Castle of this analogy?
(featured image: Stephani Spindel/VIEWpress)
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