In Daredevil’s second season, one of its
best assets was the addition of the Punisher.
Frank is an intriguing character in his own right and, as a vigilante
with a dark side, he provides a neat foil for Matt, but I think he’s at his
most interesting when paired with Karen.
Their interactions make up some of the season’s best scenes for both
characters, a dynamic that’s carried over into The Punisher (some Frank-Karen-related spoilers.)
Karen
first encounters Frank in the midst of a lot of personal upheaval and
professional uncertainty. She’s already
been trying to figure out how she feels about the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, and
now here comes another vigilante who takes matters much farther and darker than
the Devil ever has, brutally murdering drug dealers and gang leaders with
ruthless efficiency. Her desire to make
this clear-cut is thwarted. Murder is
wrong, so these murders ought to be wrong, but the more she digs into the
Punisher and his tragic history, the more complicated that gets. He’s been wronged, devastatingly so, and that
broke him. The slaughter he now carries
out is, in his mind, equal parts justice and vengeance, and yet the trauma he’s
endured doesn’t erase what he’s doing; Karen can’t quite come to a conclusion
about that.
It’s
further complicated by Karen’s own confusion about herself. Extreme circumstances in the previous season
led her to kill a man, and her feelings of anguish and guilt over that manifest
in part through her obsession with the Punisher. As those around her condemn him as nothing
but a murderer, she wonders if she’s really so different. As she follows the stories of how he only
kills the guilty, she wonders how he would judge her. Everything she feels about the Punisher is
tied up in how she feels about herself, and as she becomes increasingly
invested in what becomes of him, his chance of salvation becomes hers in a way.
These
personal issues draw Karen to the Punisher and his story, and professional entanglements
actually bring them together. When
Nelson and Murdock represents Frank in his trial, Karen is instrumental in
building his case. Her obsession fuels
her research and evidence-gathering, and it also drives her to take on new
roles within the firm (Foggy, recognizing her talents, suggests she become a
lawyer herself.) Frank sees how deep she
is into this, and he insists on her conducting his pre-trial interviews. And while Karen’s interest in journalism
begins in season 1, it grows tremendously here, ultimately leading to a career
change. Again, it’s the Punisher and his
story that spurs this on: Karen’s need
to know what happened to him, why he does what he does, and how she feels about
it.
I’m still
in progress on season 1 of The Punisher,
but so far, I’m enjoying Karen’s presence in Frank’s story there as well. With old ghosts haunting him, a man who’s
supposed to be dead has allies in short supply, and Karen is one of the few
people he can turn to. He looks to her
for information, which she somewhat warily provides. After everything that went down between them
on Daredevil (not to mention Karen’s
experiences on The Defenders,) she’s
trying to do what she can to help while still maintaining the boundaries she
needs. She’s gone pretty far down the
rabbit hole with him, and she needs to know she can keep from getting sucked
in.
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