In the latest episode of Daredevil: Born Again, Jon Bernthal made a long-awaited comeback as Frank Castle (The Punisher). As you know, we haven’t seen a glimpse of the brutal crime fighter since 2019 when the second and final season of The Punisher aired on Netflix. For a while, it even looked like that would be the last we saw of Bernthal’s portrayal, something he recently admitted to Entertainment Weekly. This is because he didn’t like Marvel’s vision for the character’s future.
“Ultimately, I didn’t see it. I didn’t see the version of Frank, and what they wanted from Frank [didn’t] really make sense to me and I thought would not appeal to the fans and wouldn’t be congruent. It was not something I was really interested in doing. So we had to walk away.”
Thanks to Dario Scardapane becoming the series’ new showrunner after the Hollywood strike, Bernthal once again managed to agree on how they would continue the Punisher’s story. In other words, we probably wouldn’t have seen the actor in the role again, had Scardapane not jumped on the show.
“They really brought me into the conversation. We really got specific about where Frank is psychologically, where Frank’s at physically.”