Daredevil: Born Again has arrived on Disney+, and in between all the fights and tights, there’s one looming question – and spoilers past this point: can Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) really be elected Mayor of New York?

To review here, this is a man who has committed multiple murders, been sent to prison twice, and is the supervillain publicly known as the Kingpin of Crime. That’s not necessarily a moniker that engenders you to working-class Americans. And though there are questions about what is or is not canon given the first three seasons of Daredevil streamed on Netflix, let’s assume for the sake of this article that everything when it comes to the whole “crime” thing is part of the package.

The criminal acts of MCU's NYC Mayor Fisk

That means that Fisk has been indicted under five or six RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) counts, which sent him to prison for the first time at the end of Daredevil Season 1. It also means he was very publicly placed under house arrest by the FBI in Season 3 – and then sent to jail again after FBI Agent Ray Nadeem’s (Jay Ali) dying confession revealed Fisk was extorting protection money and manipulating both the FBI and the NYPD.

We’re not even mentioning the street fights in Hawkeye or the showdowns in Oklahoma on Echo… Mainly because it’s unclear what the public does or does not know about all of that. On the pure basis of public information, Fisk has been in prison twice, and the subject of protests – as seen in the series premiere of Born Again. He’s also out of prison somehow, and by the end of Episode 1 has been elected Mayor of New York. It’s a done deal in the MCU... All hail Mayor Fisk.

Could Kingpin be NYC mayor in real life?

But what about real life? Could a man like the Kingpin clinch the election? To find out, Popverse talked to Seth Pollack, a lifelong New Yorker and veteran political operative and consultant, who has held different roles in a number of mayoral campaigns in New York City. While Pollack wasn’t able to reveal which campaigns for NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) reasons, he was able to comment on the idea of Kingpin for Mayor. And the short answer here? It’s not likely Fisk could run.

“The restrictions against people running for office in New York are pretty limited,” Pollack explains. “They would bar someone for having a felony conviction or for being convicted of misusing public funds, for certain charges having to do with public corruption. So the existence of a RICO conviction against him… That seems pretty damning. Those are not brought lightly, so that makes it pretty unlikely, or improbable.”

Even if somehow Fisk did grease the wheels so he could legitimize his candidacy, Pollack felt it was similarly unlikely that New York would elect him based on recent, real-life polling… But on the other hand, current events indicate things could perhaps swing in Fisk’s direction.

Somehow, Fisk returned

“[It] seems like more question about the conscience and standards of New Yorkers, which we're all learning about in real-time right now,” Pollack says. “From what we're seeing in the polling and on the streets here in New York, most New Yorkers have gotten pretty tired of corruption in public life. But as we also see in Federal office, nothing is impossible, and voters can always be persuaded, even to vote against their own interests, even to give a second, third, or fifteenth chance to someone who has demonstrated some pretty sketchy behavior.”

While there are any number of examples of the sort of “sketchy behavior” Pollack references that could be called out, one particular real-world news item looming over all of this? The corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Sure, the case against Adams is far from smashing heads in car doors or throwing Hawkeye (Hailee Steinfeld) through a window into FAO Schwarz. But the fact is that New York does have a mayor with criminal charges levied against him, right now. The big difference is that the Marvel Universe’s NYC knew about Fisk’s criminal activities before voting him into office, while the charges against Adams were levied after he was elected.

In either case, Pollack noted the checks and balances were the same.

“The governor of the state of New York has the power to remove a mayor from office at any time,” Pollack said. “So winning the mayorship and keeping the mayorship are two different things as well. I don't think I've heard of any interesting, notable governors in the Marvel Universe, but you would know better than I would.”

You hear that, Governor Pendergast? It’s your time to shine.

The Mayor’s Office of New York City did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article.

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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 
• 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