Favorite Characters: Frank Castle a.k.a. The Punisher (The Punisher)

It would’ve been relatively easy to make Frank Castle the uncomplicated face of a high-octane revenge scenario, all ultraviolence style and little substance.  And to be sure, Frank’s action scenes, on both Daredevil and The Punisher, are extremely well-done, brutal but deftly crafted and executed.  Frank could’ve been a cool enough character that way, a similar sort of satisfying to watching Hit-Girl in action (although less darkly comic and more just dark.)  Marvel’s Netflix shows, however, resist that temptation, going deeper with Frank so that you never lose sight of the man behind the vendetta (premise spoilers.)

Frank has the tragic backstory of many a comic-book protagonist.  His wife and children were killed, not by his own mistakes, but by his proximity to those of others.  After witnessing something he shouldn’t have, Frank loses his family in a bloody, devastating way.  He’d already been dragging around a lot of damage from his time in the service, and this violent injustice utterly breaks him.  He divorces himself from whatever life he might otherwise have had and devotes himself to taking revenge on everyone in any way connected to the deaths of his loved ones.  In season 2 of Daredevil, he dispatches those who had a hand in the killings one by one, with ruthless efficiency, and in his own series, he moves on to those at the heart of the conspiracy.

The franchise doesn’t absolve Frank’s actions, but it doesn’t condemn him for them, either.  On Daredevil, Matt wants to draw clearly-delineated lines between the Punisher and himself, painting Frank as a dangerous murderer who’s taken the law into his own hands, while Karen gradually begins to see him more as a victim of circumstance who’s responding the only way he can.  But Frank is both of these things, and neither, and more.  He makes immoral decisions about his means of punishing immoral people, and even as he cuts a swathe of bodies through those who destroyed his life, he has certain ethical boundaries that spring up in unexpected places, pulling him just back from the brink of becoming the same as what he hates.  At this point, it’s not even clear what Frank is still doing it for.  I think he’s lost hope of it bringing him release, and he never expected salvation.  But despite the despair and futility behind his quest for vengeance, he can’t give it up.

Frank’s damage runs deep, and in The Punisher especially, that takes center stage.  He’s an imposing figure, a lethal killer who rarely thinks twice about taking a life he’s decided to take, but he’s also a man wracked by PTSD, both from his experience overseas and from the loss of his family.  Bloody memories punctuate his nightmares and waking hours alike, and sometimes, amid all his careful plans of revenge, it’s a struggle for him simply to function.  He sees other veterans try to deal with their demons in different ways, but he’s chosen his own path to address his, even if he knows it won’t bring him any peace.

Relationship Spotlight: David Lieberman & Frank Castle (The Punisher)

Given that both are men who the world at large believes to be dead, it makes sense that Frank and Lieberman find their most significant relationships in The Punisher are with each other.  With such heavy secrets to keep and dangerous enemies to investigate, neither has many other places to turn, and even though the two spend much of the season wishing for anyone else as a partner, they’re mostly left with what they’ve got (spoilers.)

Since faking his death to escape dirty government agents, Lieberman has been holed up in high-tech hideaway, where he watches his family through hidden cameras and uses the web as his information treasure trove.  As such, he’s not exactly socialized or well-adjusted when he discovers that Frank Castle, a.k.a. the Punisher, is alive, and so he reaches out by making creepy phone calls and sending him what for all intents and purposes are incriminating tapes from Frank’s time in Kandahar.  Is it any wonder they don’t get off on the right foot?

Both guys have been put, not just through the wringer, but through the wood-chipper by the U.S. government, and it’s an understatement to say that both have serious trust issues.  Their early relationship is largely a string of incidents of one getting the jump on the other, one blackmailing the other, one imprisoning the other, one threatening the other, and one head-tripping the other.  Because of the horrible things they’ve been through, both feel the need to have the upper hand in the situation, and that means neither is willing to surrender any ground to the other.

But there are bigger things at play here, and ultimately, they have to cede at least a small amount of trust to one another in order to work together to bring down the corrupt soldiers and officials who destroyed their lives.  Even though their partnership is plagued by obvious issues, when they do work as a unit, they’re a force to be reckoned with.  Lieberman’s tech prowess and intelligence-gathering skills are vital in giving Frank the names and details he needs to go after the bad guys, where he puts his own, very bloody skillset to use.

It’s interesting to watch them work.  They’re capable of being so efficient together, but they’re also seriously dysfunctional.  And it’s not just their mutual, justified paranoia – both are also guys with strong opinions who’ve gotten very used to going it alone, and when they clash over mission tactics, they risk derailing what they’re trying to do because neither wants to let the other be right.  At the same time, though, as the season goes on, both realize they really can’t lone-wolf it.  Frank doesn’t have the technical skills Lieberman does, and the higher-ups hide themselves too well for him to find them through anything other than the most covert methods.  And even if Lieberman had Frank’s hardcore military training, he doesn’t have it in him to do what Frank does.

And so, they’re kind of stuck with each other, warily working alongside each other as they work toward the same goal for similar but not identical reasons.  They give each other hell along the way, side-eyeing one another and playing power games to try and convince themselves that they feel safe, but if either of them has a hope of seeing this through to the end, it has to be together.

The Punisher (2017-Present)

While Frank was my favorite part of Daredevil’s second season, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from a Punisher series.  A careful balance is needed with his character, because the badass action moments are exciting to watch, but that violence also comes from a really messed-up place, and you can’t just approach it as adrenaline-junkie thrills.  Now, having finished the first season, I think The Punisher manages to thread that needle pretty well, grounding the high-ocatane action sequences with exploration of Frank’s damage (premise spoilers.)

Frank Castle completes his self-imposed mission to take revenge on those responsible for the deaths of his family, but it turns out his past isn’t finished with him yet.  He’s sought out by a fellow “officially dead” man:  David Lieberman, an intelligence ghost with a talent for computers.  Lieberman’s found that, like him, Frank isn’t as dead as he’s supposed to be, and the two form an unlikely team-up to root out the corruption behind an off-the-books program Frank had been a part of in Afghanistan.

That’s kind of a messy description, but the show is a lot better than that.  It tells its tale well, weaving together government secrets, brutal action scenes, tech wizardry, uneasy alliances, and mental health struggles into a taut, unflinching narrative.  Frank and Lieberman are both men who’ve been utterly transformed by what they’ve been put through, but while that informs their actions, it doesn’t sanction them, either.  Both of them have been down dark paths in different ways, and Frank in particular thinks salvation is long since off the table.  Even as Lieberman uses Frank as his fist (and trigger finger) against their mutual enemies, he’s aware of how far Frank can go afield and sometimes struggles to pull him back.

I like that the show is populated with a number of veterans, each with different struggles.  Frank is our main viewpoint character, but the series looks at the numerous ways veterans can try to address their demons, for good or ill, and I like seeing how deep the ties of past brothers in battle go.  There are moments when Frank is looking down the barrel of someone’s gun and genuinely hurts for them, because he knows what they’re dealing with and how impossible it can seem to come back from that.

Jon Bernthal is obviously here from Daredevil as Frank, as is Deborah Ann Woll, in a recurring role, as Karen.  The series features a number of other talented actors – I’m not familiar with either Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Lieberman) or Amber Rose Revah (Madani, an agent following the same trail as Frank,) but both of them are terrific, and Ben Barnes, Prince Caspian himself, plays Billy, a former military man turned private contractor.

Warnings

Tons of intense violence, drinking, sexual content, language, and strong thematic elements.