Will There Be More Of ‘The Punisher’ On Disney+ After His ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Debut?

As solemnly promised, Disney+’s Daredevil: Born Again finally brought back Jon Bernthal’s The Punisher last week after a hefty amount of teasing. Thankfully, this wasn’t a fuzzy reunion between Frank Castle and Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock, and the axe-filled clash did plenty to help fulfill Marvel Studios streaming chief Brad Winderbaum’s declaration that this series features “some of the most brutal action we’ve ever brought to the screen.”

Is Frank Castle’s rebooting as part of the MCU (after The Punisher‘s second Netflix season showed a character losing his identity) going to go further than a one-off appearance, though? For sure. Jon Bernthal has made clear to Hollywood Reporter that he’s thrilled with Frank’s reintroduction into this world. He is also writing (heck yeah) a standalone The Punisher special in the vein of 2022’s Werewolf By Night, and Bernthal promises that he cares as much as the fans about delivering a deserving product:

“I care very deeply about Frank … We’re giving it our all and we’re trying to tell a Frank Castle story that we’re going to turn our back on the audience — it’s not going to be easy, it’s not going to be light, and I think it’s the version that this character deserves and I’m just beyond honored and grateful that we get the opportunity … It’s going to be dark; Frank has no interest in breaking out the darkness … It will not be Punisher-lite, I promise you that.”

It’s worth noting that Bernthal wasn’t always this optimistic about bringing The Punisher to Disney+ as originally written. Before Daredevil: Born Again went into rewrites, he declined to sign onto the show. As The Bear MVP told Entertainment Weekly, he didn’t want any “cuteness or humor” and wished “to really go full bore,” and what did materialize in Episode 4 has “opened the door to getting closer to the Frank Castle that I really, really want to portray.”

Bernthal added that the standalone special will be “like a shotgun blast of a story,” and something tells me that fans will be here for it.