Marvel’s Punisher Special Will Be “No Holds Barred,” Jon Bernthal Promises
“Let’s see if there’s a real openness and a hunger to let Frank be what Frank is.”
Jon Bernthal’s Punisher is one of the most beloved characters in Marvel’s Daredevil saga, but he wasn’t always set up to return in Daredevil: Born Again. Back when Marvel was still working out the kinks in the Disney+ revival, Bernthal rejected the studio’s offer to reprise his role as Frank Castle, because Born Again didn’t have the kind of story he was looking for.
“Ultimately, I didn’t see it,” Bernthal recently told Entertainment Weekly. The actor was searching for “the version of Frank” that would have built on his history in Netflix’s Punisher; apparently, there wasn’t much for him to dig into. “What they wanted from Frank [didn’t] really make sense to me... So we had to walk away.”
After overhauling the entire series and bringing on Punisher’s executive producer, Dario Scardapane, as Born Again’s new showrunner, Marvel returned with an enticing offer. Bernthal was able to get “specific” about Frank’s psychological and physical state, which we got a taste of in Born Again’s latest episode.
Bernthal’s cameo in Born Again is just the beginning of the Punisher’s return.
In it, Frank reunites with Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) for the first time in years, and it’s clear Scardapane and Bernthal understand what fans have been waiting to see. Frank has clearly been through a lot since his Punisher years, but his back-and-forth with Matt is the same as it’s always been. Though their scene is brief, it carries all the fire and brimstone that fueled the Netflix universe, and Bernthal says this is “just a toe dip” into Frank Castle’s psyche.
Bernthal will further explore his Marvel role in a Punisher-centric Disney+ special, so his appearance in Born Again is more of a proving ground for a darker, more intense version of the character. “It was like, Let’s see if this works,” he told EW of his Episode 4 cameo. “Let’s see if there’s a real openness and a hunger to let Frank be what Frank is.”
The actor’s initial hesitation makes sense, as the Punisher is not the kind of character Marvel usually invites into its cinematic universe. Fans were already worried that Born Again would be a tamer, MCU-ified version of Netflix’s dark and gritty Daredevil, and Bernthal is eager to “steer away from any cuteness or humor and to really go full bore.” Fortunately, Born Again ultimately laid the groundwork. Or, as Bernthal said, “I feel like it’s opened the door to getting closer to the Frank Castle that I really, really want to portray.”
Bernthal serves as co-writer for Marvel’s Punisher special, alongside director Reinaldo Marcus Green. “The story that we’ve laid out is, I think, really special,” the actor says. “It’s the visceral, psychologically complex, unforgiving, no-holds-barred version of Frank where he’s going to turn his back to the audience. And nothing is easy and all violence has a cost, and we’re going to see that cost.”
The Punisher special will deliver a “psychologically complex, unforgiving, no-holds-barred version of Frank.”
While the plot of the Punisher special remains under wraps, Marvel, Bernthal, and Green could go one of two ways. Not unlike DC’s Penguin, the special could bridge the gap between the first season of Born Again and its second, which is now in production. Fans clearly want to see more Frank, especially as Daredevil’s revival shows the rise of anti-vigilante sentiment in New York and the growing number of Punisher copycats in the NYPD. Frank brushed off the idea of having “fanboys” in Born Again Episode 4, but there’s no way he can let their exploits continue.
That said, Marvel could also turn the clock back to a time before Born Again, chronicling Frank’s misadventures in the years after Netflix canceled Punisher. Judging from his elaborate (if sketchy) set-up, he’s clearly amid his own crusade, and a feature-length look at it could bring us up to speed before Frank’s story (hopefully) continues in Born Again Season 2.
Either way, things are looking up for this corner of the Marvel Universe. The franchise has never had an anti-hero quite as ruthless as Frank, but it’s a comfort to know that Marvel is keen to let the Punisher run free.
