Frank Castle may have found his next target. After Jon Bernthal’s gun-toting vigilante took aim at the gangs of Hell’s Kitchen and the drug lord Blacksmith (Clancy Brown) in Marvel’s Daredevil season 2, and then corrupt CIA Director of Covert Operations William Rawlins (Paul Schulze) and the scar-faced Jigsaw (Ben Barnes) in The Punisher, Castle helped old ally “Red” — AKA Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) — take on Mayor Fisk’s (Vincent D’Onofrio) Anti Vigilante Task Force in Daredevil: Born Again.
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The Daredevil revival’s first season finale ended with a post-credits scene leading into the Punisher TV special announced by Marvel Studios, which has kept plot details close to the bulletproofed-vest. But according to a casting call leaked by Daniel Richtman, Marvel has started a search for an actress to play a “female crime boss villain.”
No character description was provided, but the Punisher’s most famous female villain in the comics is Ma Gnucci, a wheelchair-bound, quad-amputee and former matriarch of the Gnucci crime family. (In Marvel Knights: The Punisher #4, Ma, along with Gnucci soldiers, chased Castle into the polar bear enclosure at the Central Park Zoo and was torn apart.)
Ma, real name Isabella Carmela Magdalena Gnucci, was introduced in the Garth Ennis-penned Punisher run in 2000, and sought revenge after Castle killed her sons — “Sticky” Eddie, Bobbie, and her number one son, Carlo — and her brother, Dino “Uncle D” Gnucci. Ma’s vendetta began with her issuing a $10 million bounty on the Punisher’s head and it ended with the Punisher (spoiler alert!) dousing her home in gasoline before setting it on fire.
RELATED: How the Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 Finale Sets up Devil’s Reign in Season 2
The mafia matriarch seemingly returned in the six-issue “Resurrection of Ma Gnucci” arc in Ennis’ Punisher: War Zone, claiming to have come back from hell. Frank killed her again — blowing her up with a bazooka — but Ma just wouldn’t stay dead. These turned out to be surgically-altered body doubles sent by the masked vigilante known as Elite to “haunt” the Punisher, who said, “I send them to hell. I sleep just fine.”
Another villainess from Frank’s past is Rosalie Carbone, a member of the Carbone crime family in the first Punisher: War Zone volume by Chuck Dixon and John Romita Jr. The daughter of mobster Julius Carbone, who arranged for Rosalie to marry a capo’s son from the old country to unite their families by blood, Frank seduced Rosalie to get into the inner circle of the Carbones. When Frank infiltrated and then killed the family, Rosalie assumed command of the remaining Carbones and then put out a hit on her ex-lover.
At a meeting of some of the New York crime families (in 1996’s Jon Ostrander-scripted Punisher #5), Rosalie tried to have the rival families assassinated while gunning for Frank. Like many of Frank’s enemies, Rosalie caught a bullet and died.
Brad Winderbaum, the Head of Streaming, Television and Animation at Marvel Studios, has described The Punisher special as “a shotgun blast of a story,” with “all the pathos and emotion that you want out of a Frank Castle story.” Bernthal co-wrote the special presentation with Reinaldo Marcus Green, who directed Bernthal in the HBO series We Own This City and is helming the special.
“Bernthal is a generational actor,” Winderbaum added. “He’s incredible what he brings to all the roles he plays, but particularly Frank Castle. And he’s a great writer. He knows the character inside and out…. Also, I love Punisher, but I love Jon’s Punisher in particular. The idea that he’s in the MCU and can bring that to the greater universe, especially the more grounded street-level stuff, is a huge opportunity and, as a fan, the greatest thing ever.”
The Punisher TV special is expected to air in 2026, with Daredevil: Born Again season 2 slated to premiere in March on Disney+.
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