Jon Bernthal first put on Frank Castle’s skull vest in Daredevil Season 2, and he immediately established himself as the most menacing human in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After that, the character got two solo seasons, dedicated to his unique brand of carnage, but when the Netflix era ended, Castle went dormant for years. The Punisher resurfaced in Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 in early 2025, and most recently anchored the Disney+ special presentation The Punisher: One Last Kill. That special, co-written by Bernthal himself alongside director Reinaldo Marcus Green, bridges Castle directly into Spider-Man: Brand New Day, arriving July 31, 2026, where Bernthal is confirmed to appear alongside Tom Holland in his first theatrical outing as Frank Castle.
Videos by ComicBook.com
What has made Bernthal’s iteration genuinely unlike anything else in the MCU is the refusal to aestheticize the violence. Every fight scene in his run as the Punisher shows Castle destroying enemies with extreme prejudice, and the camera rarely cuts away from the bloody takedowns. As a result, the Punisher has some of the most brutal scenes in the franchise.
7) The AVTF Fight (Daredevil: Born Again, Season 1, Episode 9)
The Born Again Season 1 finale splits Frank’s role into two separate fights. First, Frank arrives to help Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) escape Mayor Fisk’s Anti-Vigilante Task Force, and the two work through the corrupt officers in the blind lawyer’s apartment. As expected, Frank kills everyone he reaches, as Matt tries to stop the Punisher from taking more lives. Then, after Matt is clear, Frank learns over a stolen police radio that the Task Force is gathering at Red Hook. He drives there alone and tears into them, taking hits and continuing to gun down officer after officer until the sheer numbers finally drag him to the ground. The two sequences back to back cover Frank at his most controlled and then at his most purely furious.
6) The Gym Ambush (The Punisher, Season 2)
During the second season of The Punisher, a group of mercenaries attempts to corner Frank Castle inside a gym, drastically underestimating his ability to weaponize an ordinary fitness center. Unarmed and surrounded, the anti-hero rapidly turns the room’s heavy equipment into blunt-force instruments, launching a forty-five-pound weight plate directly into an attacker’s face. The sequence emphasizes Frank’s raw survival instincts and extreme pain tolerance, as he absorbs multiple stab wounds while systematically dismantling the hit squad with whatever iron is within reach. The resulting skirmish feels desperately exhausting, perfectly illustrating how the protagonist is extremely dangerous even when stripped of his conventional firearms.
5) The Irish Mob Massacre (Daredevil, Season 2)
The first scene with the Punisher in the second season of Daredevil remains one of the best character introductions in the MCU. Rather than presenting a drawn-out melee, the Irish mob massacre is an ambush in which Frank targets a cartel meeting from afar. The sudden eruption of gunfire instantly kills the heavily armed gangsters before they can even process the threat, and the sequence relies entirely on the unseen terror of the sniper, focusing the camera on the destruction of the environment and the sudden realization that the criminals are completely outmatched. The swift execution of the Irish mob also established the core ideological conflict of the season, showing how Frank Castle was willing to cross a line that Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) refused in his crusade against crime.
4) The Kandahar Compound Breach (The Punisher, Season 1)
The third episode of The Punisher‘s first season drops a flashback to Afghanistan that reframes everything the show had established about Frank Castle up to that point. During Operation Cerberus, a mission that has already gone wrong with men down outside the building, Frank breaks from the unit and enters the compound alone, moving room to room and killing every armed target before his squad can exfiltrate. The sequence plays out against a country song, the editing slowing as the body count climbs, making clear this is a methodical process that Frank performs without hesitation or difficulty. The scene also establishes that the Punisher was not created by his family’s murder, and that the tragedy that befell the Castles simply gave Frank Castle the excuse to unleash the beast he had inside him all along.
3) The Rawlins Execution (The Punisher, Season 1)
Frank spends most of Episode 12 of The Punisher Season 1 strapped to a chair while William Rawlins (Paul Schulze), the CIA operative who ordered his family’s murder, beats and stabs him repeatedly, before deciding to cut out one of his eyes. Unwilling to see his friend brutalized, Billy Russo (Ben Barnes) loosens the restraints just enough, and Frank gets free. He takes a stab wound to the side, gets on top of Rawlins, and stabs him multiple times in the chest and throat before punching him until his face gives. Then he reaches up and drives both thumbs through Rawlins’ eyes. The whole sequence is shot from close range with no cuts to reaction shots or cutaway angles, and Russo watches the entire thing from across the room without a word until it is over.
2) The Little Sicily Rampage (The Punisher: One Last Kill)
Everything in Bernthal’s run as Frank Castle builds to the extended battle that fills the back half of One Last Kill. In the special, Frank is marked for death by the Gnucci crime family after destroying their operation, leading to an extended takedown sequence that begins in an apartment and burns through rooftops and street level as the Punisher defends himself from dozens of killers. Armed with whatever is available — guns pulled from dead hands, melee weapons grabbed mid-fight, eventually his fists alone — Frank takes hits, absorbs stab wounds, and keeps moving, making sure all the criminals trying to collect the bounty on his head fall dead. Director Green shoots the whole thing close enough that every impact registers, and the scale of it, the duration, the body count, the damage Frank takes and ignores, makes almost every previous Punisher fight scene in the MCU look restrained by comparison. While One Last Kill is deeply flawed when it comes to narrative and some special effects, the sequence is arguably the first time the MCU has produced a Punisher sequence that fully lives up to the character’s comic book reputation.
1) Cell Block A (Daredevil, Season 2)
In Season 2 of Daredevil, Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) uses Frank’s first day at Rikers to manipulate him into killing Dutton (Erik LaRay Harvey), a rival inmate who controlled most of the contraband in the prison. Fisk tells Frank that Dutton was connected to the massacre that killed his family, hands him a shiv, and gives him seven minutes of access to Dutton’s cell block. Frank kills Dutton and tries to leave, at which point Fisk’s guards, instead of opening the exit, throw open every other cell door in the block. The surviving inmates, having just watched their boss get stabbed, rush the corridor. Frank kills every one of them with a single shiv, ending the sequence standing in a white prison jumpsuit soaked through with blood while tear gas fills the hall and a full tactical unit moves in to drag him to solitary. The scene became one of the most iconic of the entire Daredevil run, for good reason.
Which brutal takedown from the Punisher’s MCU history do you consider the absolute best? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
Most Viewed
-
Image Courtesy of Madhouse -
Image Courtesy of The WB -
Image Courtesy of Production I.G. -
Courtesy of Wizards of the Coast
