If you can hear Jon Bernthal’s guttural scream while looking at the gif above, then you can understand the pain, anger, and violent nature of Frank Castle and Marvel’s The Punisher. Six months after the events of Marvel’s Daredevil Season 2, Frank Castle (Bernthal) has hunted down and killed everyone that was involved in the murder of his wife and children. While trying to live with the grief of his loss and his actions, Frank is pulled into a government conspiracy that connects to his past and present. He thought his mission was over, but he soon finds out that not everyone involved in the death of his family has been punished (horrible pun I know, deal with it).
This is the Punisher that fans have been looking for since Thomas Jane tried his hand at punishing John Travolta back in the 2000s (shoot, actually since Lundgren in the 80s). This series is brutal. I had to have exclaimed “OW” at least 50 times throughout the 13 episodes, and that was not even enough to cover the merciless intensity of this show. If you are faint of heart or can’t see past very realistic and haunting violence, then this show is not for you. But the thing that’s always been true about the Punisher is that it isn’t mindless. It’s morally ambiguous and makes you question what justice should be. Once you get past all of the blood and gore, it’s the relationships, character, and truthful representation of personal tragedy that make this Netflix’s best Marvel series.
This show has one of the most poignant illustrations of what PTSD does to people. War is horrible and unrelenting. The show does not shy away from the reality of what being in that atmosphere is like and what it does to people's psyche. There were some instances where the show may have taken it past what is realistic, and there is an episode arc that seems to be out of place because of this. Yet, this arc ends with the best episode of the entire season. This episode shows the events of one day from the perspectives of multiple characters, and emphasizes the theme of moral ambiguity to the nth degree. It highlights how the characters navigate choosing to trust those around them over what may be considered “right”. Throughout the show, characters are forced to make those kind of tough choices. The importance of relationships and trust is the thread that makes the audience care about what happens next.
This thread is true with every single character, no matter how ancillary their role. The dynamic between supporting characters like Homeland Security Agent Madani (Amber Rose Revah) and her partner Sam Stein (Michael Nathanson) is given just as much importance as the main relationship of the show, Castle and his newly found partner David Lieberman (Ebon Moss-Bachrach). These relationships accentuate the depth and substance of each individual character. These interactions with each other build every character's development, and this is most notably apparent in this representation of Frank Castle. We have always seen the angry Frank Castle, the revenge-filled Frank Castle. But with his interactions with Lieberman, with Madani, and with every other character, we get to learn more about the man behind the skull. We got a glimpse of this fully-rounded Frank Castle in Daredevil, but here we get 13 episodes of the pain, the loyalty, the heart, and the humanity behind the merciless anti-hero. This is a Frank Castle that nobody has ever seen before, and this character development is what carries the audience past the gallons and gallons of blood spilled.
In the end, Marvel’s The Punisher is by far the best show that Netflix has produced for Marvel. It is violent, it is heartfelt, it is personal, and it is tragic. It is everything that Marvel fans have been begging to get from an on-screen Punisher. Plus, it gives us a brilliant Ben Barnes performance as Castle’s war buddy Billy Russo (I had to get him in here somewhere lol). I am giving Marvel’s The Punisher 9/10 Jon Bernthal guttural war cries.