Over the past decade, Marvel has taken big steps towards bringing their superheroes to the big screen, with 2012 bringing about a teamup of individual heroes in one movie in the form of The Avengers, a hitherto unseen cinematic event. With 2015 seeing Avengers: Age of Ultron continuing to bring the studio commercial success and Ant-Man on the way, Marvel shows no signs of slowing down.
This has expanded, over the past few years, onto the small screen as well, culminating in the first series from Marvel dedicated to a superhero in the form of Netflix‘s Daredevil. With the first season having been released in its entirety two months ago, work is already underway on the show’s second season, and now news has been released that Frank Castle, also known as The Punisher, will be making an appearance on the series.
The character will be played by Jon Bernthal, whose most prominent role to date has been as Shane on the AMC zombie series The Walking Dead. Bernthal has also been seen on the big screen in Fury and The Wolf of Wall Street. He will be the fourth performer to take on the role of the character, following Dolph Lundgren, Thomas Jane, and Ray Stevenson, all of whom played Frank Castle in movies revolving around The Punisher.
In the comics, The Punisher is a vigilante who uses an arsenal of weapons to brutally enforce justice. The character of Frank Castle took up the persona following the death of his wife and children, going after their killers first. It’s unclear how large a role The Punisher will have in the show’s second season, or whether the character will be receiving his own series. He is not poised to be the only crossover character, however, as Luke Cage has also been confirmed for an arc on Netflix’s upcoming AKA Jessica Jones before moving on to his own series.