Jon Bernthal on going darker and more brutal for Netflix’s The Punisher

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

After making his debut during the second season of Netflix's Daredevil, Jon Bernthal's take on Frank Castle was embraced by audiences and a spin-off series centered around The Punisher was announced soon thereafter. The upcoming series will find Castle in hiding, until a conspiracy involving his tramatic past draws him back out into the open. Jon Bernthal recently spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the pressure of bringing Frank Castle's story into the spotlight. "I want to honor him and the fans to whom he means so much," Bernthal said. "I really want to get this right for them, and the pressure’s on." When asked how the Frank Castle in The Punisher compares to the Frank Castle we were introduced to in Daredevil, Bernthal said:

The Frank Castle you see in Daredevil is reeling from the trauma of having his family killed, so the only thing he knows is his mission to kill every single person who’s responsible for his family’s death, and killing them in the most brutal way possible, because that’s the only way to quiet the storm that’s in his head. He can only quiet it momentarily by taking these people out.

He’s a man on a mission again [in The Punisher], and what [Punisher showrunner and Hannibal alum Steve] Lightfoot is trying to do is ask the question “What do you do when that’s over? What do you find out about yourself when you realize there’s nothing left? What is his purpose?” There’s an introspective bent in trying to figure that out. He finds something to fight for, something new to believe in.

According to Jon Bernthal, the "overarching villain" of  Netflix's The Punisher will be Frank Castle himself, his past, as well as a bigger conspiracy. "He's up against all of it," Bernthal said. "During this show, nobody is who they appear to be…" Ominous.

Jon Bernthal also teased that the first season of The Punisher "is much darker as it goes, it gets darker and darker and more visceral. The show takes you on this journey of Frank becoming more and more human again and then shutting off and shutting off and going back to what works for him, and the place where he kind of belongs, and I think that’s a place of solitude and of darkness and destruction. It’s going to get into as dark and as brutal a place as you’ve ever seen in the Marvel world, I can promise you that." An official release date for The Punisher hasn't yet been revealed, but we can expect the series to debut on Netflix before the year is out.