Born, Again: Jon Bernthal and The Case for Frank Castle

Major spoilers lie ahead for anyone who hasn’t watched the complete season 2 of Daredevil. So quit reading now and go watch it unless you want me to ruin your day.

Not long ago, somewhere in the red and white-painted walls of the Marvel tower, I imagine a humble Punisher action figure sits atop a shelf too high to be dusted without a proper step-ladder. He sits there, next to Moon Knight and Squirrel Girl, two feet above the eye level of hundreds of artists, creators, editors, and geniuses who walk by him dozens of times a day. In the abandoned toxic waste factory that is my mind, I like to imagine a night-shift janitor, listening to music through white earbuds, taking the few steps up the ladder to reach Castle, and speaking to him while dusting off the old plastic figurine and the shelf he sits upon. “One day, Frank”, he says to the action figure. “One day”.

After watching the entire season 2 of Daredevil I can assure you, if plastic Castle could talk, he’d yank one of the earbuds out of the janitor’s ear, pull his face close to his and whisper… “I’m back, mother fucker”.

Frank Castle has always been a character Marvel and the rest of the world have struggled to bring to life on the screen in a way that balances both the comic lore and style of storytelling akin to Castle’s situation and premonitions, but doesn’t cross too far into gore-porn silliness. Even in the comics, they’ve had trouble figuring out what to do with Castle since he first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #129 (Feb. 1974), even canceling all of his runs at one point.

I know it takes a lot of people a lot of time to craft 13 hours of serialized content for any medium, and as a writer, those people have and deserve all of my respect. But here, I’m going to focus on the work of the showrunners/writers of Daredevil season 2 (the always dependable Marco Ramirez and Doug Petrie), and the true breakout performance by the incomparable Jon Bernthal.

When it was first announced Marvel would be introducing Frank Castle into the current MCU via Daredevil season 2 I was excited and nervous. I have enjoyed some elements of the Punisher film adaptations, but still felt like I was walking away empty handed, even though there were fun or exciting-to-see-come-to-life scenes or moments in the films. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was until I saw what the writers, and eventually Bernthal, did with the character.

They gave him time and space. They gave him a proper and historically consistent story, they made him a human being.

If you’re a lifelong Punisher fan like myself, and you go into Daredevil season 2 hoping for a cinematic balance between the 2004 Thomas Jane film “The Punisher” and the 2008 Ray Stevenson film “Punisher: War Zone”, then keep looking, because Daredevil’s introduction of Frank Castle (and eventually, The Punisher) has bypassed any of those archetypes and started from scratch. It’s not a reboot of the character, someone finally had (and gave the writers of DD) the time and space to fully flesh out the character of Frank Castle in a way a feature film couldn’t. Believe me, they’ve tried.

The first word Bernthal utters as Frank Castle is the most Frank Castle way of exploding off the page and onto the screen. After an exciting fight on the roof of a building, Daredevil thinks he’s got Castle on the ground and put down, albeit temporarily, when Castle produces a backup weapon from a strap around his ankle and says “Bang” while shooting Daredevil in the head.

That one moment of dialogue and face-to-face introduction was the powerful beginning of what would become a series of glimpses into Marvel’s most notorious anti-hero.

From there on, the case for Castle is presented to us: a vigilante who popped up in Hell’s Kitchen probably as a result of Daredevil. A copycat, perhaps, without the martial arts training Murdock received. This guy just goes around blowing people away. At first, he must be stopped, but after a while, our team starts to see another side of Castle, mostly thanks to Karen Page.

One of the many areas they nailed Punisher’s back story was by bringing in the familiar elements from the comics that make up the character, while making him relevant to the current Marvel tv/film universe. In episode 3 we find out Castle was an ex-marine: check. His family was killed in a mob shootout in Central Park: check. He’s using his military training, the grief and anger of his family being murdered, and his thirst for blood as fuel for his violent crusade: check.

To say they did for Castle what season 1 did for Murdock would be fair. However, since this is Daredevil’s show, I had to consistently remind myself to be consciously invested in Murdock, Foggy, and Karen Page’s storylines. I doubt the general public will struggle with this to the extreme that I did, because the general public isn’t a crazed and potentially deranged fanboy of Castle like I am. I found myself watching some of the most stylized, impressive, and perfectly shot and choreographed Daredevil fight scenes, all the while shouting at the tv “Put Castle back on the screen, damnit!”.

This I attribute to Jon Bernthal. I’ve heard he campaigned for the role after finding out Marvel was going to bring The Punisher to life in this new world. I’ve read possibly every interview he’s done about the character, and to say it impressed me would be an understatement. This guy is a gift to true Punisher fans. And no, I’m not talking about the meatheads on Instagram who post photos of their steroid-poisoned bodies in the gym wearing a black Punisher shirt they got off of Etsy. I’m talking about the people who defend Frank Castle when people say he has no place in the Marvel universe. The people who mostly didn’t want Marvel to bring him back because every time they do they can’t seem to get it right. Not to mention the military and law enforcement who use Punisher’s symbol as an idea, a concept, a piece of currency they can gather around and say “We agree on this. This has meaning to us”, and then put themselves in danger every hour of their lives so that we don’t have to. These are the people Bernthal mentions in his interviews. He’s talked about how the desire the fans have for a true, three dimensional adaptation of Frank Castle has impacted and in some ways driven the work he’s put into the character. His Twitter and Instagram posts relating to the role have used the words “Honored” as a caption. This is an actor who is looking beyond the gig, even looking beyond the script and the character, and taking into account elements he doesn’t have to, but feels obligated to because it’s not just an important character for people like me, the character is important to him.

From the frightening eyebrow raise when he says “Bang” through a bloody mouth, to the completely battered and tortured breathing patterns in the cemetery when he describes his children to Daredevil, this performance will stand center stage in the crowded hallway of “heroes” our digital libraries have become. In my opinion, this is the best-acted comic book character I’ve seen on screen, and I believe time will show there are many who wouldn’t disagree.

The power Bernthal brings to the character is in what he holds back and what he lets out, and mostly importantly: when. He shows us Castle is not just a vigilante, he’s a coarse, open wound. He wears his heart on his chest, you can see this in Bernthal’s eyes, and the way he walks, and most of it is unsaid, not using dialogue. In reality, Castle’s intentions are more pure than most super heroes. He has integrity, he fights for what he believes in, without having to waste time second-guessing every decision he makes, like Murdock does. This is what makes the dynamic between them so powerful. Neither of them understand each other. Frank can’t understand why Daredevil beats up people and puts them in jail, only for them to gain power (and more friends) like what happened to Wilson Fisk. Murdock doesn’t understand why Castle is ok with leaving a trail of enemies behind him for someone else to bury because he’s already on the trail of the next gang or criminal. Much of this mindset Castle has in this adaptation comes from Garth Ennis’ Punisher Max series, which I’m told was heavily drawn upon by Ramirez and Petrie for Daredevil season 2.

The arguments between Castle and Murdock are perfectly chiseled vignettes that provide more character work and ethics discussion than they do plot movement, something we rarely see in this “golden age of television”. It makes sense. “You hit them and they get back up, I hit them and they stay down”. Castle is saying what any of us would say if we stopped and really thought about what Murdock does. We cheered for him the entire first season, and there I was at episode 3 of the second season, questioning everything Daredevil was doing. I guess Matt Murdock and I have that in common. The danger for Bernthal was how to take Castle where he needed to eventually go in those 13 hours. He tracked the pacing well, he kept his “outbursts” consistent and timely, he even managed to get a few very Punisher-esque moments of humor through that cut and bruised face. “Sounds like a party”.

This is what makes Frank Castle such a compelling character, and The Punisher a true anti-hero. He not only doesn’t see himself as a hero, even when it comes to his military service (try asking any Medal of Honor recipient if they would refer to themselves as a hero and they’ll say no), he is very anti-hero when it comes to Daredevil. If Marvel gives him the time and space to expand within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I’m sure we’ll come to see he doesn’t give a fuck about the Avengers either. He’s a one man army, and in order for this to be more than just the comic styled adaptations we’ve seen in the past, they needed an actor who could show violence with his face, his eyes, and his words. Castle doesn’t believe he’s crazy, he fights off the PTSD defense, he fights off insanity, he gets angry with Daredevil when he calls Castle insane. He doesn’t believe any of it. The violence he rains down on his enemies is how he was trained to kill or get information, only this time it’s not an order coming from above, it’s a void coming from within, a void created by the very men he hunts and executes. The brilliance of Bernthal’s portrayal is he shows us that he knows it’s not going to fill that void. He knows he could kill every person on the planet and it won’t bring them back. After vengeance is fulfilled, his mission continues. He wants to tactically and systematically rid Hell’s Kitchen of any semblance of lowlife, underworld activity, anyone who could have had a part in making him a widower and anyone who would do the same to another man. This is extreme but it’s not an uncommon human response to loss, it’s just that Frank Castle landed on a certain stage of grief and has chosen to make his home there.

One of the main struggles I had with this being a 13 hour process was that (and this is just pure fanboy selfishness), I wanted to see Castle in the outfit. The whole damn thing. I didn’t care what iteration of the skull they went with, or if he had a long coat or a short one, I was just continuously impressed and moved by Bernthal’s performance that I wanted to see it come to fruition. As you’ve seen if you finished the season (if you didn’t, you’re an idiot for reading this far), you’ve seen Castle finally don the iconic skull, but only in a few shots, albeit shots I can only describe as “Punisher Porn”. I won’t go as far as others have to say he needed to “earn” the skull. Rather, I say he had to arrive there. He needed to embrace being “The Punisher” rather than become The Punisher. That’s where the writers here nailed Castle. He was “The Punisher” when we met him, but then they introduced us to Frank Castle. They said this man is important, and if you don’t understand the man, you won’t understand The Punisher. They did this in the grittiest, dirtiest, most violent, heart-wrenching way possible, they showed us a man who had lost so much, he instantly and with no say or influence or power over the matter, became the most dangerous force containable in the human form: a man with nothing to lose. When Frank finally sits down at the dinner table in his now-abandoned home, he isn’t the Frank Castle he was the last time he sat there, and he isn’t the Frank Castle he was when we first saw him at the beginning of the season. From the outburst “I am the Punisher” in the court room, to when he holds up the newspaper and the headline reads “Frank Castle Dead”, we see it register on his face “I know who I was, and that’s not who I am anymore. I have become someone, something else”.

By the time I finished the series, I found myself grateful and thankful they introduced The Punisher in this way, using Daredevil’s world and cast of characters as the stage on which to finally turn the spotlight on a beloved character who has sat in darkness for far too long. As crazy as this sounds, for me it was better than just creating his own show and introducing him that way. Daredevil needed Frank Castle in order for Matt Murdock to go where he needed to go in Season 2, the same is true for Karen Page and her character’s development.

Will Punisher get his own series, even though some at Marvel have said no? My prediction, 100% yes, without a single doubt in my mind. Do you think him finding the disc with “Micro” on it was just a fun little easter-egg high five before they put Castle back on the shelf next to Moon Knight and Squirrel Girl, or was it the tv version of the after credits tease typical to these Marvel properties that let us know we haven’t seen the end of a character, we’ve just seen the beginning? The performance by Bernthal alone should warrant a standalone series, and the groundwork for the story has already been laid. I understand there’s a lot for Marvel to consider, because The Punisher is one of Marvel’s riskiest properties, and respect is due for them having the balls to bring him into this world in the first place, especially in this post-Disney Marvel universe. With this adaptation specifically, Marvel has given the character the respect he deserves, and we the fans are in turn giving Marvel our trust in this character once again.

My hope is that this series will show people who only know of the Punisher from the film adaptations or the mud flaps on their cousin’s F150 that there’s more to him than just a crazed vigilante with creative ways to dispose of or dismember his enemies. My hope is that something of Bernthal’s performance has reached beyond the page or the screen and shown the world a comic book character can be a real fucking mess of emotion, passion, humor, introspection, rage, pain and complexity…just like the rest of us.