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With Daredevil: Born Again now on Disney+, we’re not just reunited with the cast of the former Netflix series, but we’re also back in one of the most iconic locations in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU): Hell’s Kitchen. In the Marvel shows and comics? The area is a hotbed of crime and violence. But in real life? It’s one of the more gentrified neighborhoods in New York City and has been for years.

Sure, there was a time when Hell’s Kitchen owned the moniker. The stories vary, but going back to the 1800s the district – which is on the Midtown West side of Manhattan, from about 34th Street (think: Madison Square Garden) to 59th Street (think: Columbus Circle/Central Park) – has been a mix of factories, shanty-towns, and dockworkers. It wasn’t until 1969 that the neighborhood was targeted for gentrification, and thanks to new apartment buildings, hotels, and restaurants, it remains not just a safe place to visit – but a good place to start in New York, contrary to what you might see on TV.

What the politicians of Hell's Kitchen think about Daredevil's return in Born Again

“The great thing about Hell's Kitchen is that due to the preservation of the building stock, it is probably one the few neighborhoods in Manhattan that you can come to and still find a place to live,” Jesse Bodine, district manager for Community Board 4, which includes both the Chelsea and Clinton/Hell’s Kitchen, tells Popverse. “It's got a lot of small apartments, great walk-ups, and that just lends itself to [a] constant flow of different people coming and living here, and then moving on, and having families here.”

So what gives? Why is the real Hell’s Kitchen on TV so different than the one IRL? Part of that, at least, goes back to the original conception of the character. Stan Lee and Bill Everett created Daredevil back in 1964 before the push for gentrification began. And you can probably intuit how the always bombastic Lee would find the idea of setting a character named Daredevil in Hell’s Kitchen impossible to resist.

And sure there was plenty of crime in the area, but there’s crime everywhere in the comic book universe… If you tried to count the number of petty thieves captured by Daredevil, Spider-Man, Luke Cage, Moon Knight, etc, etc on the streets of New York before the main action of an issue begins, it would dwarf the number of real reported crimes in NYC in any given year. In essence, the Hell’s Kitchen in the comics isn’t much worse than any other of the non-existent alleyways in New York so much of the action of Marvel’s street-level comics take place in.

What the Daredevil TV writers think about Daredevil's return in Born Again

TV, though, is another story. Daredevil was set to premiere on Netflix in the early days of the MCU, and when show creator Drew Goddard set about figuring out the premise for the series, one of the key breakthroughs was setting up why Hell’s Kitchen is, the way it is.

“His premise was that the Chitauri invasion from the Avengers movie had badly damaged Hell's Kitchen, and as a result, it had become run-down and dirty,” Christos Gage, who wrote on the first season of Daredevil, explains. “Basically, everyone who could afford to leave had. What was left was more like the New York of the '70s and '80s, with rampant crime and poverty. I thought that was genius.”

Comparing Daredevil's Hell's Kitchen to our Hell's Kitchen, from a resident's POV

This idea powers a lot of the plot of the first season of the show, from Wilson Fisk’s (Vincent D’Onofrio) whole plan revolving around the gentrification of the area to multi-episode arcs like Daredevil protecting an old woman who lives in a rent-controlled apartment. It also helped the show channel one of the greatest runs in Daredevil comics history, by Frank Miller, which ran in the ‘80s but brought Hell’s Kitchen back to its old, decrepit state.

“It’s not called Upper East Side or Upper West Side. It’s called Hell’s Kitchen,” Bodine notes. “So it has a connotation of a dark side there. So I get it. The comic books, the world of TV and entertainment, always likes to fluff that up a little bit.”

There is crime in the real New York, of course. It’s not like Hell’s Kitchen is its diametric opposite in real life (Heaven’s Bathroom?). Monica Hill, a resident of the area for the past nine years, explains, “Yes, unfortunately, drug use on the streets has become common the last few years, and hard to ignore. And being a gayborhood, there are sometimes hate crimes which catch my attention.”

When asked about the crime levels, Bodine was careful to call out the district's “four amazing precincts” and that “public safety is one of the top priorities in our neighborhood.”

And despite the seeming disparity in their reactions to real crime in the area, neither Hill nor Bodine get particularly upset about Hell’s Kitchen’s depiction on screen.

“It's so far from the reality of the neighborhood these days,” Hill says. “It is not unlike depictions of Gotham in Batman, nobody really expects to see the Joker or Riddler wandering the streets, and a caped millionaire swooping around.”

“I probably lost track after the first season,” Bodine adds. “But I liked it… I didn't personally mind the exaggeration. You certainly have some of the best schools here… People feel generally safe around here.”

Quips Hill, “How much is Matt Murdock dining out? Because, we have a bounty of amazing restaurants, so if he's not eating well, that's probably the most egregious mistake.”

Nowhere is the discrepancy between the real Hell’s Kitchen and the one on Daredevil – and Born Again – more present than the fact that the show shoots in New York City… But not in Hell’s Kitchen. Gage recalled the real Josie’s Bar, a regular hangout for the characters in the show, is in Brooklyn, not Manhattan. He also noted that the church that serves as a confessional for Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) changed its location so often that Gage started calling it “Our Lady of Perpetual Clearance.” (Clearance is the process by which the name of a person or place is cleared for use by the legal department.)

In fact, the LA-based Gage didn’t even realize what the real Hell’s Kitchen was like until late in the process. While he and his wife, fellow Daredevil writer Ruth Gage, were covering the set for Episode 9 of Season 1, they headed to New York Comic Con at the Javits Center – located on the most western edge of Hell’s Kitchen – to see the cast introduced at a blockbuster panel.

“On the way [there] we walked through the Hell's Kitchen Flea Market,” Gage recalled. “I don't think I even realized we were in Hell's Kitchen until then.”

Fear not, we have the essentials when it comes to Marvel's Daredevil - especially with Marvel Studios' Daredevil: Born Again. Check out:

• The key difference between Netflix's Daredevil and Marvel Studios' Daredevil: Born Again, according to the showrunner
• The best Daredevil stories of all time
• What to watch before Daredevil: Born Again 
• If you’re starting Daredevil, here’s why Born Again matters
• Popverse Picks: Our favorite things for Marvel's Man Without Fear including Ann Nocenti comics, the Netflix series, and more
• How Vincent D'Onofrio reinvented Daredevil's Kingpin
• Marvel's Daredevil actors, ranked from Charlie Cox to Ben Affleck and even Rex Smith
• How Frank Miller accidentally killed a Daredevil cartoon (and Marvel killed a book to avoid pissing him off)
• That time we caught Daredevil actor Charlie Cox sneaking into New York Comic Con as Bluey