Punisher’s Jon Bernthal On The Stakes Of Bringing His Character Back To The MCU

Everything old is new again, as cast members of many of the Netflix Marvel series have been making their way to the MCU. We’ve seen Charlie Cox appear as Daredevil in Spider-Man: No Way Home and She-Hulk and Vincent D’Onofrio back as Kingpin, but when the upcoming Marvel series Daredevil: Born Again arrives for Disney+ subscribers, we’ll also see the return of Jon Bernthal as The Punisher. And the actor is clearly looking forward to it, as he says the character means a great deal to him.

Frank Castle was introduced as an antagonist for Daredevil and became so popular that he got two seasons of a show of his own during the Netflix/Marvel era. Bernthal’s version of the character was popular with fans. Speaking with Collider, Bernthal said that he believes the character was so popular because Frank Castle is somebody that everybody understands at least a little bit. He explained…

I think there’s a reason why that character has resonated as deeply and strongly as he has. In the hearts and minds of comic book fans and first responders and people in the military and people all over the globe. I think there’s a little bit of Frank Castle in everybody. He exists very strongly inside me, and I care about that character deeply.

Exactly how The Punisher will fit into Daredevil: Born Again is unclear, but we can be fairly certain that the two crimefighters won’t get along. One has a religious objection to killing the bad guys, and the other has no such compunction. And we can be pretty sure that the Punisher we get is going to be very much the same character we saw before, as Bernthal says he’s committed to doing it “right.” He continued…

I also know that it’s absolutely essential that if we do it, we do it right, and we have real sacred integrity to the source material and to what is at the core of Frank. I’m gonna do my absolute best to make sure that, if and when we do it, we do it right.

At this point, it’s far from clear when we’ll see Daredevil: Born Again. The show shut down production during the writer and actors’ strikes and while Vincent D’Onofrio says it will be gearing up again soon, it sounds like Born Again has gone through a significant overhaul in the interim. Still, however long it takes it seems clear that fans will be happy to see both Daredevil and The Punisher again.