The Dark and Gritty Dread of a Punisher TV Series

Last month, Netflix and Marvel announced that the latest series to be greenlit in the their partnership woyld be a stand-alone series for The Punisher, the vigilante character played by Jon Bernthal and featured heavily in the second season of Daredevil. The new series will be part of a shared universe that includes Marvel’s Jessica Jones and the upcoming Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and Defenders series.

Said executive producer and head of Marvel Television Jeph Loeb, “We want to thank the fans who are clamoring for more of Jon’s stunning and powerful performance as Frank Castle from Marvel’s Daredevil.”

Who am I to argue with the clamoring fans? And yet here’s a counterpoint: can we not? This is but one outlier opinion on a character who by all observations was incredibly popular on Daredevil but: Punisher sucks.

Put more specifically, the Punisher represents the type of superhero of which that the culture has grown decidedly weary. Frank Castle’s operating philosophy appears to be that old standby that in order to defeat the monster you need to become a monster. Full episodes of Daredevil seemed to be dedicated solely to the ethical arguments about vigilantism between Castle and Matt Murdock. Can murder, violence, mayhem, destruction all be justified in the name of ridding Hell’s Kitchen of its criminal element. (Pause for requisite chuckle at the idea of modern-day Hell’s Kitchen as a criminal cesspool.)

We. GET. IT. Daredevil never seemed to tire of letting Castle grandstand and make his case for grim, dark violence as a necessary methodology.

This is not at all dissimilar from the kinds of murky hand-wringing we saw approached in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy or even this year’s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. One of the most common complaints about Zack Snyder’s vision of Superman is that he’s too dark, morally compromised, and willing to kill people. And after a big opening weekend, audiences fled Batman v. Superman in droves. Obviously, Frank Castle does not come with the same set of expectations that Superman does, but they do share one thing: an inky black aesthetic that pervades the stories told about them. Watching Castle on Daredevil this past season was a punishing (no pun intended) experience; an endless cycle of violence and then heavy-handed justifications for said violence, all with Murdock placed in the unenviable role of calling for moderation.

There’s also the small matter of Bernthal fatigue. Marvel is latching onto him as their next big thing. They’re not alone. Since he broke through on The Walking Dead, he’s been in seven films, the TV series Mob City, and the HBO miniseries Show Me a Hero. The character template he established on that show — very tough, a little crazy, stubbornly dedicated to the idea that merciless toughness is the only way to fight the bad guys — has been repeated in nearly every role he’s taken, to one degree or another. He’s Hollywood’s resident bruiser. On Mob City, he basically played the Frank Castle of gangster-era Los Angeles.

It’s one note, and Bernthal plays it often. I’m already weary at the thought of him playing it for an entire season as a front-and-center Frank Castle on a Punisher series.