Tom Holland is still being pretty coy about his future in the Spider-Man franchise. While it’s a guarantee there will soon be another Spidey film—he is the most bankable superhero ever created, after all—it has yet to be confirmed that Holland will reprise his role as Peter Parker. If Holland does return, however, we’ve got the perfect antagonist he should face.
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Enter, Frank Castle.
Most fans of The Punisher will likely want to see the character return the R-rated roots they’ve seen in two seasons of a series on Netflix and in two feature-length films. For a moment though, let’s just entertain the idea of putting Castle in a mass-market PG-13 movie.
We now know that within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Parker (Holland) is officially on his own, with no family members left alive and his friends oblivious to the character’s very existence in the universe. While that doesn’t mean they’re going to make an R-rated Spider-Man movie, it does mean he’ll be forced to face more “grown-up” situations, and what better way to display that than taking him out of the frying pan and throwing him straight into the fire?
The Punisher will be, after all, arguably the most “grown-up” antagonist he’d ever face. Beyond that, however, the characters even have a deeper connection than most think. The collectors out there are well aware of this, but Castle’s first-ever comic appearance came within the pages of Amazing Spider-Man #129 in February 1974. During that story, Castle is an assassin hired by the Jackal to kill Spider-Man. Castle then finds out Jackal has manipulated him all along and flips side, vowing to take out the Jackal.
From what we’ve seen in live-action from Jon Bernthal’s Punisher, he’s far from a hired hand—but change is always possible. In Spider-Man 4, they don’t even need to make him a hired hand. Just introduce a plot device that positions the beloved gun-toting antihero against the Friendly Neighborhood web-crawler.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is now in theaters while both seasons of The Punisher are streaming on Netflix.
More Spider-Man: No Way Home Coverage
- If There’s a Live-Action Spider-Verse, There Needs to Be a Ben Reilly
- Back Issues: Daredevil Returns For a Classic Marvel Team-Up
- How Spider-Man: No Way Home Could Set Up Miles Morales’ MCU Debut
- 9 Spider-Man Villains We Still Want to See in Live-Action
- How the Hell Did Sony Get Spider-Man’s Movie Rights Anyway?
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