So back when you started, there
were some doubts, right?
Were there?
I hadn't heard.
So that's news to you? I know.
What would you like to say
to those people who think, well,
I like what this guy's doing,
but...
I've elected people
to represent me
who should be doing this job?
Everything, All the criticism
that I've heard of
what I'm doing, it
basically boils down to, well,
what about the system?
Trust the system.
The system wasn't
representing people. But I am.
Daniel didn't really have much
to say about himself at first,
so it was really on
the journalists
in Brazil to find out who he was
and how he came to be that way.
There wasn't anything about him
growing up that would make
you think this guy's different.
It was comics, video
games and football.
He never talked to anybody about
it, any of his friends.
But at some point he just
started,
you know, avoiding
physical activities at school.
He said he was bored with them.
Definitely not one
of the cool kids in school.
But he do these things when we
hung out
and I thought it was hilarious
because he didn't even care.
He's almost the archetype,
the lost soul, the outsider
who suddenly discovers, Hey,
I can have control over
my own life in a very
big, very powerful way.
Superhero comics and movies
have given him the tools to say.
I'm a superhero.
Do they like you? I don't know.
Word also started to get out
pretty quickly about the crime
numbers the city was posting.
and we had posted double digit
declines
that began to attract a lot of
attention.
He's a global celebrity.
And, you know, against
like all of the good.
he's doing, the complaints?
They're less than a footnote.
If you want to understand
why he became so popular
so quickly,
all you have to do
is look at his background.
And they find out
we've been living right
under our noses in Nova
Sao Paulo his whole life.
But as you'd expect,
it's the story
about his birth that's unusual.
His biological parents
are from the state
of Pernambuco,
and we find out they both
passed away
from something that looks like
radiation poisoning.
The father right before
his birth, mother just after
and when no family
surfaces to take the baby,
he's placed into the
foster care system.
A family adopts him,
and from what we can
tell, he grows up
normally under the
circumstances.
So we were in college
by then, and one day
he just stopped going to class.
So when I texted him,
he told me that he'd
been thinking
a lot about the way
his mom was k*lled.
I thought that was weird
because he never really
talked about her.
He told me that he needed some
time off and he wanted to,
you know, figure out who he
really was.
He's discovering this strength,
this speed, the fact that
nothing seems to hurt it.
We don't know when he first
noticed there was something
different about him,
but we do know he threw himself
into figuring out what
to do with it.
it almost perfectly fits
the contours of the classic
superhero origin story.
Now, if you're somebody who
doesn't have these things,
that's a perfect fantasy.
And that's why superhero stories
connect with so many of us.
And now along comes
someone who gets to
live that story.
So what is he thinking about?
He's growing up reading comic
books like the rest of us.
And what those have done
is given him a sort of
decoder key for reality.
Oh, now I understand why I'm
like this.
Now I understand why I'm
feeling this way.
Now I understand what I should
do.
And what is it that superheroes
do?
They fight villains.
It was only like four years ago.
I had been an anchor on CNE
for three years.
You start thinking you've
seen everything,
even the bus hijacking.
So that wasn't a surprise.
But what happened next? That
was.
A bus hijacking
in Nova Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Coming to a surprising
conclusion...
...a man appears to have leapt
through the bus window
at an inconceivable speed,
stopping the hijacker
before disappearing.
And then the g*nman
just goes like flying
off the bus.
And this... I guess
I would call him a kid.
This kid steps off,
like totally calm,
like he just got to his stop.
An astonishing story out of Nova
Sao Paulo, Brazil.
It was like a scene
out of a superhero movie.
The attention of
the entire world
has turned to the Brazilian city
and to the vigilante hero from
last...
The vigilante named
Daniel Dias has left scientists
in disbelief with a
slew of abilities
that seem more at home.
In a comic... He can leap
hundreds of meters.
He runs faster than the speed of
sound, and he's strong enough
to bend solid metal.
What we don't know
about him, how he exists.
So the day after the bus.
After he introduced himself
to the camera,
he walks in as if,
you know, nothing happened,
like...
and, oh my God,
before he even gets to the door.
I mean, for a shy kid, this
moment is the moment that you
dream of.
He was the hero.
Everybody at school knew his
name and not just at school.
Now is the biggest story in
the world is a comic
book come to life.
He's a celebrity.
Everybody wanted
to be the childhood friend.
Everyone had this
one story about the one time
they had talked and how
from just that they knew
how special he was.
Definitely news to him
how many friends he had.
We know because we've read
the same comics and seen the
same movies that he has.
That celebrity is something
he must have anticipated
since it began.
But there are different ways
of interacting with the public.
There's the Bruce Wayne model
where I'm a celebrity
in everyday life,
but nobody knows I'm Batman.
Then there's the Peter Parker
model where I'm the totally
anonymous,
mild mannered
high school student.
Oh,
there's the Tony Stark model
where it's like,
Hey, I am Iron Man.
I think if you look at the world
today at digital technology,
you think I'm going to spend
half my energy protecting
my secret identity,
then order 50 sets of matching
long underwear
and somebody is just going
to find out who I am anyway.
I'll pass on the whole
Bruce Wayne thing.
As a public figure, at least
you go into a restaurant
and you get drinks on the house.
You know, you get the perks.
There's this big question
What's someone with
Daniel's ability supposed
to do in the real world?
If you want to make money,
the first thing I think
is probably I should play
a professional sport.
But as soon as there's
even a whisper of that,
the International Olympic
Committee, the players
associations
in every sport, even in America,
they make it known
that he's not welcome
to compete.
So the next idea is from
these American producers
who try to sell him on the
concept of a big live show,
kind of a spectacle
where he can show
off his powers around the world.
That just is like a circus act.
He passes.
Some people were even trying to
attach themselves to him
from all Churches,
the ones talking about
like prophecy chosen one
stuff that creeps him out.
So if you never had a
friend turn into an
object of worship,
I'll tell you right away.
I had no idea what to tell him.
I mean, he's trying really hard
to be the same person
he was, but his life looks
nothing like it did before.
You have people calling him a
Savior, God.
What do you tell your friend?
I was like...
Take the free stuff.
You know, what would you say?
But I think his dad was really
the one reminding him,
you have a gift.
You can do things.
Look what's happening in the
country.
You can tell he's
kind of searching for meaning.
And he's thinking,
What's my way to go big?
But in all these places, his
response is.
I don't want to be part of that.
So you have a superhero.
The first thing I think is
he's got to fight crime, right?
I think someone looked at him
and figure.
Sooner or later,
this kid's going to be
busts and bad guys.
He might as well learn
what's game's about.
So they let him participate
in some police operations.
You'd seen his face. He loved
it.
Everybody loved it.
What is a superhero?
A superhero is someone
who sacrifices for us.
Someone who can do the job
alone. So we don't have to.
Now, you can have superhero
teams, but what you don't
have is superheroes
on teams. So every time he gets
involved with an organization,
there are these disagreements.
He wants to do things his way.
He feels like they're holding
him back. And he's right.
They are. I mean, he's a
he's an unstoppable force.
But that works both ways.
We had started talking
a lot when he was out
there trying out stuff.
You know, every day would be a
text.
A meme, a video call.
I like that he hadn't changed.
If anyone had a right
to change, it was him.
But he was still the same person
I knew growing up.
You know, because he genuinely
believed
that he could do the right thing
and that he would do
the right thing.
He just didn't feel this
trust coming from
the people making the decisions.
That speech was when
I first set up and realized
this guy wasn't
just some celebrity out there
with a couple of models
in his arms.
He was somebody you got to pay
attention to.
That was it.
One minute he was a celebrity.
The next he was like.
Well, no one really knew what
it meant.
I had no idea what he was going
to do.
You know, even as a kid,
he was always the person
who would take his own decisions
without telling anybody.
So this was pretty much like
him.
He also announces
that he has a new
name now, Warden.
which means guardian.
The superhero name.
There's always been
something about violence.
Even defensive, necessary
violence
that was recognized
as so foreign to civilized life.
The life of the town,
the life of the family
that our fighters
have always had
to assume a different persona.
Whether it's w*r paint or
samurai masks
or the codenames that our
soldiers use when they talk
to each other on the radio.
When you're in that world
where life and death
are on the line,
you need to become someone else.
And sometimes that
someone is a truer you.
Warden.
Obviously, it's an English word.
It's not a Portuguese word.
Daniel had gotten to know some
people,
entertainment industry people,
and they told him, you know,
you might be working on a local
level, but
like it or not, you're
an international figure.
You need people all over the
world to hear one word
and think of you.
And he saw that, too.
So Warden hits the scene.
He's shaking hands. He's on
patrol.
And he quickly discovers
something.
He discovers that supervillains
the "raison d'etre"
to be a superhero.
Well, we don't really get a lot
of those in a real world,
what we do get in
the real world,
in the real criminal world,
are a lot of ordinary people
with an underdeveloped
sense of empathy
who are trying to find ways
to to cheat, to take advantage,
and sometimes use
violence against
those they perceive as targets.
Not an evil genius masterplan,
frankly, for that stuff.
There's not a whole
lot that superhero
can do that a normal can do.
You know, you you learn the
neighborhood, you meet the
people you earn their trust.
You develop good sources and
you use data.
That's how you solve crimes.
And the more crimes you solve,
the more crimes you stop.
I think his idea was more,
I dare you try something
on my watch.
You always have the
association of the superhero
and the city with his city.
Batman has Gotham.
Superman has Metropolis.
Green Lantern has Central City.
Now, the comic book writers
didn't have to do that.
It cost them just as much to
draw Superman in Metropolis
as it did to draw them on the
moon.
But there's always been this
sense that a superhero
isn't some distant figure
watching us from Mount Olympus.
They're part of our community.
And Warden understood that.
I worried about him in the
beginning.
You know, he was coming from a
place
where if he was in your
life, it was as a celebrity.
Like this professional lifesaver
that the least controversial
person imaginable.
But how do you keep this up
when your job
is to make judgments about who's
a good guy and who's a bad guy?
If you're not naturally the kind
of person who craves attention
and suddenly millions of people
you've never met have
opinions about you
being under that microscope
gets to you.
I remember he told me about the
first time
he stopped a robbery, I think
it was
at a gas station,
and the guy had stolen
like 60 bucks.
So he tackled the robber
and the guy starts screaming,
howling,
like making noises
that you've never heard
in your life.
And at some point, he looks at
the guy and
he sees that the guy is not well
and he's not armed or anything.
And he was like, Is this who
I'm fighting?
So I think this was really
tough for him.
The problem was this
was all legally very tenuous.
He wasn't the type
of guy who wanted to read
you your rights.
He hadn't been trained in
the police department's
use of force standards.
He was a superhero
not some recruits
with a rulebook.
In my office, we got signals
from certain judges that to them
what one was doing was
surveillance on private
citizens without a warrant.
It was an untenable situation.
Warden had agreed to let
some TV producers
put a camera crew on him.
That was how Brazilian Hero
started.
These were the people
who thought
up his new international name.
So of course, they didn't
keep it in Brazil.
Right away they packaged it
as Our Hero and licensed it
all around the world.
It's a massive hit.
People call me a Warden.
Ever since I was young,
I've known I was a little
different.
I don't think he loved having
cameras around all the time,
but he figured at least
he could control the message.
It also brought in a huge stream
of revenue for Warden.
It just cements him
as this internationally
beloved figure.
So he's coming in to millions of
people's homes every week,
doing these heroic, basically
magical things in front
of the camera.
Davi Lopes is the state
representative
that falls on that grenade
and tries to act on some
of the concerns
coming from the police.
The "OAB" the Order of
Attorneys of Brazil and some
members of the community
Consequences. So
this is really the first time
that anyone's had to wrestle
with this question.
Can you apply the law to a demi
god?
Can you arrest him? How?
What kind of laws do we need?
If you can't just let him do
whatever he wants.
Can you?
The investigation.
I think it really just changed
the way he thought about things.
You know, he saw what he did
as a community service
that, you know, everyone's
super hero.
And then these politicians
come along and treated him
as a punching bag.
He saw it as a game to them.
So that was the first
time I actually saw
him get frustrated.
Well, it turned out
investigating
him was very unpopular.
Warden wasn't the guy handing
speeding tickets.
People were seeing him
stopping awful,
violent people every single day.
And more importantly,
they were seeing it on TV.
You threatened to take
that away from people.
And, you know, you playing with
fire.
We forget the salience
of the feeling
of physical safety in politics.
You know, in Brazil,
people saw this reality.
Tens of thousands of murders
and r*pes every year.
And no matter who you are,
your survival instincts kick in
and you think my security first.
Other people we'll talk about
later.
And they said to
the politicians,
I don't want to hear anything
you have to say until you fix
this.
How can you keep me safe
in my home, in my city?
It was a top voting issue in
the country.
And so everybody acted.
And if you're Brazilian
and you feel like the system is
sacrificing your safety
for some abstract
concept like due process,
you get that lizard brain
reaction,
you're making me unsafe
and you get fed up.
As it turns out, public opinion
didn't matter one
way or the other.
So this scandal breaks
and it's just the perfect
stew of ingredients that
get people actually
interested in local news.
He doesn't stand a chance.
Everybody, millions of people
knew that he wasn't happy
with this investigation
and that anything that would
make Lopes' life harder
would be good for him.
So it just took, you know,
someone out there who
decided they knew
how to help.
With Davi Lopes out of the
way and his supporters silent.
The coast was really clear for
Warden to do things his way.
The first time I thought
maybe that feeling
you've got to watch your back,
that if you're not on his side,
something bad was
going to happen.
That's what he wants.
Maybe Warden is someone
you've got to watch out for.
What is the superhero way?
To fight crime.
And part of it's about optics,
right?
The spectacle. Every arrest
showcases
that you're faster,
stronger, tougher than
the bad guys.
You maybe humiliate them.
Part of the superheroes
job is to be a moral force.
You're embodying in one person
the values of an entire
community,
and you're delivering the
smackdown that community wishes
it could give to anyone or
anything that threatens it.
You're saying our side, the side
of order and righteous violence
beats your side, the
side of disorder
and unrighteous violence.
But what the superhero way
really means is no rules.
You have the heroes sense of
morality and you trust it.
But Warden isn't,
you know, filing an
arrest report.
And he's certainly not going
to show up in court
to testify at the trial.
I think people celebrated Warden
because they made
that connection.
They realized he is us.
This is what we would do
if we had the power.
The question is,
where does that fit into
the legal system?
So you can see how things
might be on a collision course.
I don't know how to explain it.
It felt like he was himself
again.
You know, everybody had this
idea of who he should be
or what he should do
or wanted something from him.
And suddenly he felt like
he could define himself.
And he came alive.
It was an amazing combination
of the person I grew up with
and the man I was
getting to know.
It had to be a secret, though.
Obviously, he wanted to protect
me.
You sense this new
confidence watching him.
You know, the sex offender
gets a hot shot to his crotch,
the dope fiend gets hauled in
with drugs all around him.
He was showing his sense of
humor.
Let the punishment fit the
crime.
So as you'd expect, everybody on
the force gave him a wide lane.
On the one hand that
it was his popularity,
you knew you'd be shouted down
even before you opened
your mouth.
But there was also
this intimidation factor.
Every time he flexed his
muscles and ran someone
down, he was reminding you,
I'm stronger than you.
I'm faster than you.
Essentially, I'm unstoppable.
And he didn't have to open his
mouth.
Warden never felt like the best
use of his time was chasing
drug pushers
or any random street criminals.
Here in Brazil, we say that's
like trying to dry ice.
Even when he tries going
after organized crime,
he's hitting the corner
dealers, the triggerman,
those street level guys go down,
you've got another five
replacing them in the next day.
The fundamental problem stays.
It's clear Warden is starting
to think if this is the best
use of his abilities.
But this time there are
people around Warden who
have very strong ideas
about what problems
need to be solved
and they have his attention.
Warden had these
relationships with the Nova
Sao Paulo business community.
The idea was since Warden
didn't want to get paid
by the government,
they make donations to support
his new Justice Initiative
operation.
There were a few examples
where a company would bring him
in to give a lecture to their
employees.
All of a sudden,
Warden was making these
huge arrests.
Was white collar, financial
crime, criminal leaders,
even politicians.
All the people that you thought
were untouchable. Falling
like dominoes.
They would show up at the
courthouse, essentially
gift wrapped with evidence
for the prosecutors to make
their cases and cameras to
get the public exciting.
None of the evidence
would hold up in court
because it was collected
extrajudicially
and violated due process
that only made Warden more
popular.
The defense lawyers weren't
happy.
The civil liberties
groups cried bloody m*rder. But
when the courts had to let
these criminal big shots
go free on technicalities
that made Warden the hero
and the legal system the
villain.
He was saying, You've
all complained
about this for years now.
Everybody stand back
whilst I do something about it.
It's an iron law
in all times, in all places.
It's extremely unwise
to be rich and not befriend
the authorities.
Now, whenever you have one of
these anti-corruption campaigns
led by one person, one savior
who's all about cracking down,
all about putting that villain
or handful of villains on stage
for the public to hate
without passing laws
that change the incentives
that create the corruption
in the first place.
What you have is not
an anti-corruption campaign.
What you have is
a pro your friends
corruption campaign.
Write it down.
Take it to the bank.
Every time.
You talk to him by then
And it was millions of ideas
all the time,
like green speedways,
bust these criminals disaster
response system.
He said his eyes
were opening to the world.
It was good to be
with someone that cared so much.
You know, he really thought
he really believed that he
could change the world.
And the more his plans grew,
the more the organization grew.
He had the lawyers
had the digital forensic team.
He had the liaison
to handle business
with the city.
He had the PR guy, all of them
recommendation from his
business friends,
for what it's worth.
The smart businesses
started to make contributions
to his justice initiative
straight away.
And there's a subtext to those
payments.
It's not settle.
It's maybe don't look so
closely at me.
The buildings collapsed right
at sunrise.
I'd say that was the next phase.
You know it was just this
big empty eye sore that the
owners wanted to replace
with this city of tomorrow.
And the City has just tied them
up in court for years.
citing historical preservation
of the site.
And it turns out that the
owners had
become big donors
to Warden's Justice Initiative.
So when the buildings come down,
it looks like pretty clear
that there's one group
that has a financial
stake in this
and one person who
could have done it for them.
You know, you have this
unauthorized demolition,
this expl*si*n in a
residential area.
You're going around the courts,
around the whole legal process.
You have people in the
neighborhood
getting sick from the chemicals
this puts into the air.
Most of us look to the State
Attorney General, Romeu Filho.
Everyone's waiting to see what
he does
and he does nothing.
So if you're keeping score, the
people
who go around the law:
Warden and the owners.
No charges against them.
The people who call out the
people who break the law,
they get investigated.
For me, that was "what the
f*ck" moment.
I think anyone who reviewed the
suits
that the city filed
to prevent the demolition
as I had.
Found them to be
in bad faith and without merit.
More than that, it's
important to remember that
our whole legal system exists
as a channel for the people's
sense of justice and fairness.
And when courts have thwarten
what people understand
to be justice,
when they're undermining
the public's confidence
that the system works,
then you have a problem.
Whatis the justice system for?
If you can imagine the tribe
of early humans coming back
from a mammoth hunts.
Yeah, they discover
that somebody has committed
a m*rder.
The entire society is rattled
in its anger and vendettas
and distrust,
and you need domestic
order to be restored.
That's what the job of the law
is, to be our collective
retribution.
When you look at our system
today, it's gotten so
complex and so far removed
from that basic, original
purpose that bad actors
know they can exploit it.
The demolition case.
They were just a small example,
and Warden helped people
see how they were standing
in the way of the
public interest.
And that paved all the work we
did.
And I think that's a great
thing.
And that was essentially
the way things were going to go.
Warden would play
the wrecking ball,
Romeu Filho would play
the legal bodyguard,
and their friends would play by
their own rules.
Now, if you're a reasonable
person or a reasonable business,
you would look at that
situation and say,
I want to be Warden's friend.
You started seeing changes
right away.
There's a wave of construction.
The streets were cleaner.
You're talking to people.
They are telling you
they feel safer.
It's all a powerful statement.
You know, you have one person
standing
against all the old,
creaky bureaucracy
and red tape and he's winning.
So people pay attention to that.
Thank you and thanks, guys.
In a very short term,
we've had some huge changes
in Sao Paulo.
We've seen some landmark
arrests, which I think
perhaps the very best
investigators in your country
will be just a little
bit jealous of you.
Yeah. You know, hopefully most
of us don't have enemies.
And I know I didn't when I was
younger.
But now when you start
doing things
that impact a lot of people,
the enemies you make tell you a
lot about who you are.
So back when you started,
there were some doubts, right?
Were there? I hadn't heard.
Okay.
So that's news to you. I know.
At this point you'd hear
things unofficially.
Police chief gets advice to drop
an investigation, journalist
gets a story
k*lled, a prosecutor gets
reassigned, but nothing ill*gal.
And nobody can come forward
because they will know
that somewhere
along the chain of things
that are there to stop bad
things from happening.
There's going to be someone
who's afraid, corrupt or just
plain not on their side.
Everything. All the criticism
that I've heard of
what I'm doing, it
basically boils down to, well,
what about the system?
Trust the system.
The system wasn't
representing people. What I am.
Now, at this point,
if I'm Warden, I'm feeling
pretty good.
I got these circles
of protection around me.
So there's the real
one, which is the
politicians and the businessmen
and the courts and the press
people
who are all letting Warden
make his own rules.
Then there's the people
who've decided, I'm for
them, I'm their champion,
and if I'm doing something
dicey, they don't even
want to hear about it.
The feeling that Warden stoked
in us.
It was ancient. It's
been with humans since
the beginning.
He was the demigod
who held the world
on his shoulders.
He was the folk hero
who went around the law
to deliver justice
and stick his thumb
in the eyes of the
powerful people.
Someone like that,
even when they're
fundamentally different from us.
There's this feeling that he is
us.
His struggles are our
struggles and his enemies are
our enemies.
You know, every day it would be
the rescues, the show,
the handshake,
the strategy session next week,
next quarter, next targeted,
next project.
It's hard to compete with that.
You know, people felt connected
to him.
So I'm going into this
with my eyes wide opened.
And I decided to ask him
if we could be officially
out dating.
And next day, his team
calls me into his office.
And there's everyone lawyers,
consultants, managers.
And they all agreed that
being out dating would be
the worst thing possible.
For me, obviously
the more the time passed,
the bigger he got and the more
the distance between
the public figure
and the man would disappear.
There's a sense in which
a superhero is just
another kind of celebrity,
and what celebrities
and powerful people are
really good at is creating
these hermetically
sealed universes
where everyone loves you.
And all the news is good news.
In Warden's case,
you take that celebrity bubble
and you add years of reading
about superheroes
and their promises of power
and hyper competency.
And you've got someone whose
life hasn't
exactly been primed
for committed relationships.
So how come there's only one of
you?
I would have thought
if we'd looked into your
story of origin.
We'd been cranking out
at least a dozen more
of you superheroes.
Yeah, well, how do you know
you wouldn't get
a super villain?
The show's ratings were still
strong and getting stronger.
People want to know everything
about him.
You have gossip sites
paying thousands of dollars
for any whiff of information
about who might be involved
with Warden
who went to lunch with
him, who was seen leaving
his apartment last night.
But it was like a mirage.
Any time you go too close to
one of these stories,
it would disappear.
I never told anyone about us.
He called it "the plan",
and I was all in on it.
It was our future.
But most of the time, I
just felt like he was gone
and he was actually gone.
Like he would disappear for
days.
And when he'd show it up again,
he'd apologize and apologize.
Say how important
everything he was doing was.
Be romantic for a day,
then get back to normal
and then disappear again.
There's a very clear
difference and everybody
figure it out pretty quickly.
Investigating Warden's
personal life is okay.
He kind of dances with you.
He likes the mystery
investigating what was going on
in Warden's professional life.
Some of the things the
city was doing,
that's when you get the threats.
How do you silence
someone in the 21st century?
It doesn't look like the old
way.
As humans, we hunt for patterns,
we're told, all the time.
History repeats itself, right?
So we're very good at spotting
the last threat to a free
society.
Book burnings. Canceled
elections.
th*gs marching in the
street. No way. You're not
going to slip that by us.
But then we pour all our energy
into convincing people
that what we're seeing now
is just like the last thing.
Problem is when people
realize, no, it's
not just like the last thing
they decide. It's
not worth worrying about.
So what we're not good at
is spotting the next threat.
These days, you don't need th*gs
going around knocking
on people's doors.
That's inefficient. It's ugly.
You don't need to say
a word. You're th*gs.
They don't even have to be your
th*gs.
And I'll ask you one more
question.
Do you think about
your limitations sometimes?
Like there's something
you just can accomplish
no matter how
strong or fast you are?
No.
No? No. Because I'm
the least important part
of what's happening
in Nova Sao Paulo.
It's not about what I've done.
Everything I've accomplished
will vanish overnight.
Without this movement,
these thousands of people,
good people who know
the difference
between right and wrong
and want to fight hard to make
this
a better place for all of us to
live.
In a way, people embraced Warden
for the same reason
they embraced
superheroes during
other periods of
high social anxiety. In the U.S,
you had superheroes going to w*r
for America in the 1940s,
and then they were protecting us
from nuclear weapons
during the Cold w*r.
And then we saw them deployed
as guardians looking out for us
after September the 11th.
Now, I think during periods of
declining trust in institutions
and a sort of societal unwinding
like what was happening
in Brazil,
Warden looked to a lot of people
like the solution.
It's important to understand
how police works in Brazil,
there's two types.
The military police who are
responsible
for patrolling the streets,
enforcing laws, and
the civil police
who are mostly responsible
for investigating crime.
One might catch a criminal in
the act
and take him to the other
for arrest and investigation.
So dividing the responsibilities
that you might find in another
country's police department.
But both sides answer
to the state
secretary of public security.
There have been more complaints
about Warden
interfering with police work,
costing them cases.
So the Secretary of Public
Security decided that he needed
to get on the same page
with Warden, and they need
to get it in writing.
So Warden's people go, sure,
here are our terms.
His people didn't explain it,
didn't try to convince anybody.
It was just, here
you go, take it or leave it.
And none of that mattered
when Warden wanted
to get rid of him.
If Warden was against someone,
it didn't matter what his
supporters thought before.
Suddenly everyone was in
lockstep.
It was just like with Davi
Lopes.
Warden's concern.
The concern of his team was
that the Secretary became less
interested in protecting
the residents of this city
and more interested in
protecting himself
and some shady interests.
Warden's position was that
the Governor should appoint
Michel Borba
as the new Secretary.
Michel Borba was the head
of the Cyber Crimes Unit,
at the Warden's Justice
Initiative.
And Warden's
argument, reasonably, was that
his cybercrimes unit
was pioneering the crime
fighting technology
that the police
would use in the coming years.
So why not put him
in charge? It was simple.
So now Warden is asking
for a voice in the
political process.
A very large voice.
And I can't blame
the governor for listening.
How do you go up against
the most popular personality
in the world
who, by the way, uses
violence professionally?
The newest move from Warden
has raised alarm from critics
who warn that Brazil's
justice system
is bending to serve one man.
At that point, I knew that if
Warden wanted anything,
he was going to get it.
The 19th of June.
Essentially the whole city
coming together
for a big party, was going to be
bigger than the last carnival.
But this was was Warden's
carnival.
They were expecting hundreds
and thousands of people.
And then...
I had never, ever
seen him like he was that day.
He said that he could feel
himself losing control
like he liked it when
he k*lled that man.
You couldn't stop saying I did
this.
He came after me.
He blamed himself
and he said it would
never happen again.
It was a young man
who several years earlier
had been removed from the police
after a series of disciplinary
problems.
He seemed to have developed
some kind of obsession
with Warden.
He k*lled 33 people in less
than 2 minutes
before a thankfully Warden
could stop him.
Immediately, people were asking
questions.
You know, there had been
murders under Warden's watch,
but this one was different.
Mass shootings like these
are not common in Brazil.
And never on this scale
and in broad daylight.
The victims were families.
Kids.
There was a sense that Warden's
enemies were lurking everywhere.
They were in corporate
boardrooms, the local
newsrooms, but especially
they were in government, he
was sure, and his supporters
especially were sure.
But this was their way, his
enemies way of
of shaking their confidence
in him, the sense that he
was protecting.
And I'll be honest with
you, there was conspiracy
theory from the other side
that Warden had planned the
attack
as a false flag operation,
and he would use that panic
to unleash the next phase of
whatever he wanted.
I think a lot of the wilder
claims that my office
was giving credence to
conspiracy theories
and so on, even at the time,
it was fairly clear
that those claims were
advanced by people
with a political agenda
who wanted
to discredit the justice system.
What I saw from the vantage
of my office was a series
of troubling connections.
Now, those connections
may not have amounted
to anything,
but I was obligated to pursue
the truth wherever it took me.
I don't think he slept for a
month.
You know, he looked
at the guy, the sh**ter,
and he saw the whole system
trying to defend itself.
You know, like a disease body
rejecting medicine.
He said that he could
finally understand
how far they were willing to go
and that he was going
to fight back.
Who benefits?
Just smells funny.
I'm just asking questions.
Movies and TV and comic books
have trained us for decades
to look behind the scenes
for the hidden hand.
It just makes stories
more interesting
and it's perfect for our brains,
cause and effect patterns.
If something happens, it's
because someone wanted
it to happen.
Randomness, coincidences.
There's nothing interesting
about that.
Oh, and if you don't
see the patterns,
if you think a coincidence
is just a coincidence, there's
an explanation for that.
You're a sheep.
And I asked him how he felt
about the whole thing.
Did he actually think
that these people were willing
to k*ll women and children
just to make him look bad?
And he said, I was naive, like
used to be.
And I honestly didn't know
anything about corruption
and I didn't know
how far people were
willing to go
just to, you know, stop change.
He said that he needed to be
ready to go as far as they were.
That was a shift in him.
The companies
decided that they needed
to signal that they were in the
right side of the Warden issue.
You saw the Warden sign in
people's profile pictures.
You saw the resignations
at different companies.
You could feel the temperature
rising.
In these circles, there was
this feeling
that the walls were closing in
on the bad guys.
And it kept everything
at this fever pitch.
There were these incidents
where teachers, middle school
or high school teachers
would say something
that sounded skeptical of Warden
or some of the actions
he seemed to be endorsing.
And some student would hear it
posted on
social media and there would
be a wave of harassment.
See, the Internet
was the perfect hothouse
for these things to grow in.
Some of those teachers
had to leave the city.
I can tell you the city
felt tense in a way I'd
never experienced before.
One day you'll see Warden
walking down, shaking hands
and talking about
how we're all cleaning
this place up.
The next day, you'd see them
fighting wildfires
or rescuing people
in mudslides, just in case
you forgot what he
could do to you
if you didn't get with the
program.
So at this time,
every time you talk to him,
it would be about his enemies,
his enemies in this
radio station
or, you know, the office
that's working against him and.
I really wanted to be on his
side.
You know, I really wanted our
relationship to be something
apart from all of this.
And it was actually the point
of keeping it a secret.
But at this point,
I just feel like
he's testing me.
He'd want to see my phone.
He'd want to know who
I was talking to.
And at some point
in the streets I
started noticing
some people following me.
So I went back home and I asked
him
and he said, Yes,
it's for your own safety.
That was the limit for me.
I told him he was turning
into someone I didn't know
and that he really needed
to think if he wanted
to keep going on a path
that was making him so
unhappy in that I definitely
wasn't going with him
and I didn't really see myself
anywhere in here.
I always think it's ironic
that when you have a leader
who sees plotters and coups
everywhere, it becomes a
self-fulfilling prophecy.
And the more they lash out
at their imaginary enemies,
the more real enemies they make.
I had been talking to Davi on
background
and I told him about
this conversation
I had with a police officer.
He'd gotten a call and gone to
the scene.
The suspect essentially
it been what I would describe
as tortured and k*lled
by Warden.
But the officer decides
to investigate
a little further and he realizes
and he has the proof
that Warden got the wrong guy.
It tortured and k*lled an
innocent man.
It's just. Beyond words.
So the officer, you know,
does the paperwork, files the
report
and his boss tells him
to destroy all the evidence.
So he goes to his boss. His
boss and.
And what they on this guy's
table is a photo of him
shaking hands with Warden.
So the officer takes one
look at that photo and decides
it's clearly not safe for me
to know what I know.
So I'm going to shut up.
It wasn't just police officers
that were starting to talk.
It was like a handful of people
in the State Attorney
General's office,
a handful of people in the
courts, a few teachers, a
bunch of journalists.
At this point, everyone is
communicating separately.
There's this feeling of paranoia
that if the wrong person
gets wind of this,
something terrible could
happen to you.
It's called the coordination
problem.
Nobody wants to be the
soldier that jumps out of a
trench and gets gunned down.
But if everybody jumps out
at the same time,
there's a decent chance
that some of
them will make it to the target.
The problem is, how do
you know anybody's
going to jump out with you,
especially when you don't even
know who else is in the trench?
After I told Davi about this
story.
He said to me, You know,
there are other
people who had similar stories.
I said, How many?
There were a lot.
He showed me a video,
something the Brazilian
Hero producers tried to bury.
There's a man and he's taunting
Warden
and Warden just snapped. k*lled
him.
I felt sick.
So I guess you could say
I'm getting used to this
superhero thing.
I've stopped some bad guys
and helped to fix my hometown,
and I've learned more about my
powers.
More importantly,
I've gotten to connect
with people. Still.
It's a funny thing
being called a superhero
all the time.
Maybe this is the year
when everything changes.
I was in the front yard
when my wife called out to me.
Turn the news on.
And I thought, oh, sh*t.
Disturbing images
emerging today from what sources
and the prosecutor's office
in Nova, Sao Paulo
say was an act of
brutality carried out by Warden.
Guard the skeletons in Warden's
closet, Literally
and figuratively.
I walked away that morning.
You know, it comes to a point
where
the whole thing that
you've constructed,
something gets inside
and it's just really easy
to tear the whole thing down.
He had been calling me and
texting me the whole day,
but I wasn't answering.
So he showed up at my apartment,
just furious that
these people for,
you know, try and destroy him
and at me for being
on their side.
And I told him I was done
and he didn't like that.
And honestly, that was. Scary.
He said that there were people
trying to hurt me, that he was
the only one keeping me safe
and I wasn't saying anything. I
was done.
So he got really quiet
and he said, You're
not a part of this anymore.
And then he just left.
Reports from Brazil that Warden
has left
Nova Sao Paulo amid
a wave of expl*sive
allegations in recent days.
We knew immediately
that this was
the product of a sophisticated
media operation and there
was really no effort to
hide it or hide the agenda.
I think that people from
Nova Sao Paulo saw right
through it. I really do.
But the national media
has its own imperatives. Right?
And they smell the story.
7:14 a.m... A search warrant
was issued for the Justice
Initiative Building.
At 7:20, the military police
deployed its forces to
Sao Paulo to take him into
custody.
The police had assembled their
forces along a two kilometer
perimeter around a building
sort of sending a message like,
look, we are serious,
but we don't have to do this.
That's when Warden showed up.
This was the first time anybody
had seen him since the
story came out,
In his mind.
This is the ultimate battle,
good versus evil.
He's defending his city.
This is what superheroes do.
The police basic doctrine
was we acknowledge
that any one officer, any
hundred is no match for Warden.
But he can't be everywhere at
once.
So we're going to advance and
presume that he is not going
to start a bloodbath
with thousands
of civilian lives on the line.
And we're going to dare
him to fire the first shot.
He accepted.
I didn't think
whether it was safe from the
studio.
It was just these words
repeating over and over
"just get through it".
"just get through it"
It takes 2 hours for the Army
to take the first block.
Fighting continues
to rage in Nova Sao Paulo.
Well, after dark, the
White House issuing a
statement urging all sides.
It was taking its toll.
A big toll was police against
civilians.
Warden was doing damage
but trying to avoid
a body count.
Shocking images of violence
in the streets
of Nova Sao Paulo as residents
gathered as an act of
protest that appears
to have descended into violence.
This brawl.
People in masks just tearing
into each other.
As bad as it was for the police.
They're taking territory,
they're holding it,
and they're pacifying
the civilian population.
Finally that evening,
they have a tight cordon
around Warden's
building and more police units
mobilizing.
He's surrounded.
He's not going anywhere.
Now, this is the dilemma.
There's only one way into that
building.
And the police know that
they're not going in
there without losing
hundreds of troops
and possibly more civilians.
They're not going to be able to
arrest Warden. It's a siege.
And the plan was to see
how far Warden would go.
And now you've got pressure
on the Governor.
You've got the President
calling.
You've got casualties, damage
in the water and power
supplies, the possibility of
unrest in other cities.
Everything is pushing
toward a fast resolution.
And I think it occurred to
a lot of people, especially
around Warden,
that times like these times of
crisis
are when you get to make the big
changes to your wish list.
Warden did his part
and he faced those policemen,
thousands of them, outside
his building,
and he made it clear
that he wasn't going
to abandon his city.
My job was to make sure
that this incursion
didn't turn into facts on the
ground.
This was the deal.
The state would withdraw
all of its
emergency forces out of the city
and the state will allow
the city to govern its
affairs in accordance
with the wishes of
the people who lived here.
That meant holding a vote, a
plebiscite.
The people from Nova Sao
Paulo would decide
whether to investigate Warden
or give him the legal tools
he needed to best serve the city
and to the rest of the country.
It was a statement
We want our business,
you mind yours
and by our example
we'll show you
that we've got the better way.
Voters in Nova Sao Paulo
They'll decide whether
to grant Warden
sweeping new powers or leave
the justice system intact.
Warden has promised
to abide by the result,
even if a no vote would force
him to face prosecution by
the state government.
There's this thing that a lot of
us think that the king,
the emperor, just marches
up to the throne
and says, I'm in charge now.
But that's not true.
That's not how it happens.
The first Roman emperor
was given his powers
one at a time
by the Senate to save the
republic.
They didn't even call him the
emperor.
They called him the Princeps.
It meant first citizen.
On the surface, it was the
status quo.
But behind the scenes, Warden
had been given a state
within a state,
he could run things his way.
Whatever that meant on any given
day, and anybody who didn't like
could just get the hell out.
I left as soon as the fighting
stopped.
It felt like witness protection,
you know, new city, new home,
new friends.
And I know that if he wants to,
he'll find me or
it'll be someone
he doesn't even know
who wants to be part of
the movement. But.
I wanted to tell the truth
first.
I have been told the execs
from our parent company
were flying
in the next morning to
meet with my producers
, so I knew that wasn't good.
People were already trying
to get me off the air.
I was a liability.
And with the meeting happening,
I pretty much knew that night
would be my last broadcast.
They were sh**ting right at the
messenger.
So I received a call from my
boss in the UK headquarters.
So very polite conversation
wherein I was informed
that the owners had essentially
terminated
the whole newsroom in Brazil,
effective immediately.
You look at the news coverage
since we left, I think
Warden's been pretty happy.
Warden was about
controlling the message.
But look
Yeah. What's that line?
Democracy is the theory that.
People know what they want
and deserve to get it good and
hard.
I think people. Got what they
asked for.
I was very proud of the work
I done as a state
attorney general.
But after speaking with Warden,
we came to the conclusion
that I would best serve
the city as Mayor.
And fortunately, people agreed.
And I think all the work we did
speaks for itself.
There's no denying that.
Nova Paulo, the city
that Romeu Filho and Warden
are building will impress you.
It wants to impress you.
Its skyline is its own message.
Look at what we can do.
It's one part Singapore, one
part Sparta.
In this state of perpetual high
alert,
looking every day for attacks
from without and traitors
from within.
There it is. He has his city.
He enforces the law his way.
Frankly, I think it's the
perfect expression of
what a superhero is.
A lot of it, you'll
recognize, looks the same.
But there's an iron curtain.
You don't get a lot of news
that's real. You get rumors.
Now, Warden is doing less
and less public appearances.
He is spending more time alone.
He's angrier. He's paranoid.
He sees enemies and rats
everywhere.
Ever since people came forward
about him.
Now, if you live in Nova Sao
Paulo,
you're going to think twice
before criticizing Warden.
And if you read anything about
the city,
it's because Warden
allowed it to be published.
Anything else gets branded
a conspiracy theory
and shouted down.
So the truth is getting
murkier and murkier,
and the collective sense of
reality is slipping away.
You hear his obsessed with his
legacy.
He needs to know what comes
after him.
You hear about researchers.
He has them doing experiments
trying to duplicate
whatever made him
everything he swore not to do.
Criminals. Suspects disappear,
but
We don't know that. Romeu Filho
keeps it under guard
the new way can't be wrong.
It's still too much
to gain for the winners.
So the message from everyone
every day, business, news
is that the city is thriving.
The city is safe.
The city is defying its critics.
It's silenced the doubts.
It's kicked out the traitors.
It's found a better way.
It has its Warden.
And now the real work can begin.
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Warden (2025)
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