A little over a year after he was last seen in the MCU in Daredevil: Born Again Season 1’s finale, Jon Bernthal’s Punisher is back in Marvel’s Special Presentation, The Punisher: One Last Kill. With another appearance on the horizon in July’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day, you could be forgiven for wondering whether this special explains how such a conspicuously R-rated antihero could be reshaped to fit into Spider-Man’s more family friendly universe. Particularly when Frank’s story has been so inherently tied to his own trauma. The idea of him suddenly becoming a general street level hero who Spider-Man encountered on his own heroic mission always felt a little odd, and their worlds don’t seem to mesh, even though their locations coincide.
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If you’re looking for an explanation for the union of two such different characters, you won’t find it here. That in itself makes Brand New Day more interesting, given this is probably the most violent, least family-friendly version of Bernthal’s berserker we’ve met so far. But while One Last Kill doesn’t explicitly tie Jon Bernthal’s hyper-violent vigilante to the actual story of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, it does move some chess pieces around to help explain why Frank is involved in broad terms. But first a very specific way. Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for The Punisher: One Last Kill.
One Last Kill Includes 1 Spider-Man: Brand New Day Easter Egg
When Ma Gnucci tells the story of her family’s demise, she reveals that her youngest son, Carlo, was killed at 6:47, and the time has burnt into her mind like a wound. As a result, she sets up a bounty on Frank and invites every killer, criminal and desperate soul in New York to attack his home by publishing his address at exactly 6:47 to honor her fallen son. The number might prick the attention of Marvel Comics experts, as it’s the last issue of the Brand New Day comic run, which released in 2010 and then marked the beginning of a new era for Spider-Man. The fact that the MCU is doing the same with Brand New Day shouldn’t be lost here and it’s a pleasant little call forward to Punisher’s next appearance.
One Last Kill Doesn’t Explain Daredevil: Born Again Season 2’s Punisher No-Show
Crucially, Bernthal’s appearances in One Last Kill and Brand New Day meant that he was unable to appear in Daredevil: Born Again Season 2, so it was somewhat expected that there would be some explanation for why he dipped out of the battle against Wilson Fisk and his corrupt AVTF. Surprisingly, One Last Kill chooses not to acknowledge that storyline at all: which leads to a bit of a plot hole. Last time we saw Frank, he was breaking out of the AVTF’s Red Hook prison, and for him to just drop any urge for vengeance against his captors is decidedly contradictory behavior. And it’s not like it’s established that he went quiet: One Last Kill confirms the annihilation of the Gnucci family happened very recently, so Frank’s mental deterioration can’t be pinned as the reason for his AVTF blindspot. It’s just something we have to ignore, apparently. Will that come back into play in Brand New Day? Unlikely: the AVTF are in prison, and so is Daredevil, and unless Frank breaks Murdock out, and that’s who is in the prison transport from the BND trailers, there’s no throughline. So how exactly does One Last Kill set up The Punisher for his next appearance in Spider-Man: Brand New Day?
One Last Kill Sets Up Punisher as a One-Man War Against Crime (Again)
The Punisher: One Last Kill seems to have a rather loose relationship with previously established canon, not because of any conflict, but because of what it pays attention to. It works as a continuation of the events of Netflix’s The Punisher broadly and doesn’t entirely contradict his appearance in Born Again (though Frank’s refusal to help Daredevil never quite made sense in terms of where the Netflix show leaves Frank). But the Frank at the end of The Punisher Season 2 is very different to the one we meet in One Last Kill, and Born Again doesn’t account for the change. In both of the earlier projects, Frank is an active vigilante, fighting crime and helping avoid innocent victims like his family, but One Last Kill seems to open with him in retirement after finishing his “kill list”. Confusingly, he’d put that blinkered vengeance mission aside in the Netflix show to help others, but just as The Punisher Season 2 undid the end of Season 1, One Last Kill undoes that ending too.
So, Frank’s journey is a familiar one, because it’s the same one he went through in The Punisher Season 2, because he’s reset. In other words, him being an active hero on New York’s streets and being involved in the tank sequence shown in the Brand New Day trailer wouldn’t make sense without a major change to his outlook on heroism. As much as One Last Kill is basically a Die Hard-like one man battle, the more important battle is Frank’s internal conflict that leads him to the revelation that he can still provide value as a do-gooder. It’s a slightly strange journey, given Frank seems to be convinced of his heroic calling by some of the most grotesque violence in the MCU (which suggests he might have a worrying fetish) – as well, of course, as the reward of saving the coffee shop family – but it at least explains (again) how Frank puts aside the tunnel-vision of his own painful vengeance to become a more conventional hero.
At one point, the vision of his fellow veteran Curtis (Jason R. Moore) – who isn’t dead but only appears as a hallucination – challenges Frank on what his purpose is now his kill list is complete. By the end of One Last Kill, Frank realizes that he does have a higher purpose (which, again, he already knew at the end of Netflix’s Season 2) and that sets him up to be a true street level hero. We don’t yet know what brings him into the fight in Brand New Day, but we do know that it doesn’t have to be tied to his own past. He could just be doing the right thing. One word of warning: if you have a younger Marvel fan who’s excited by the new Brand New Day character and is somehow oblivious to who The Punisher is, do not let them watch this as preparation. We don’t want kids to accidentally join Frank in his PTSD.
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Image Courtesy of Marvel Comics
