#226 – The Punisher: One Last Kill – The Darkest Corner of the MCU?

Welcome back to Marvel Maniac and MCU After Show. This is your host, Eric Cicada, aka Mr. Honest. And I don't even know if I'm fully okay after watching the Punisher. One last kill. Wow. I mean, this might be one of the darkest things Marvel has ever put out. This is in the MCU Reminder. There are a lot of. Of innocent things that happen in this universe, and this story does not tell many of them. I was actually emotional watching this. There were moments that were so harsh that it really affected me down to the core of who I am. I mean, I was coming in to review a show and I'm walking out, being strongly affected by it. Not feeling. Not sure exactly how I feel. Knowing I watch something amazing and very well done, but also something that pulls you into a story that's very dark. This is less a recap and more of me just processing what I just watched. So to put it in full perspective, I did watch season two of the Punisher, the only season I missed. And I want. I got really into it. So I'm pretty honed in with Frank Castle's character going into this. And if you haven't seen, if you like this and you haven't seen, this is your entry point. You haven't seen the show. It's good, it moves a little bit slower. But I gotta tell you, to have character development in the MCU as told by those shows and this episode, we are very lucky as an audience to have all that. And that's why I think we're very lucky that they took a direct continuity from the Netflix series and now bringing it all into Frank's story, showing what's canon in unique ways. Oh, so Frank is at rock bottom, like lower than we've really seen him. Maybe like since Daredevil season two, when we first meet him, he's. He's even maybe worse than that, though. His focus is on pills, drinking, eating a lot of those. He's drinking booze, he's doing pull ups and they're bloody. His fingers are bloody. That's how many pull ups he's been doing. I don't know how long he was sitting there doing it. In this episode, episode, movie, special, special presentation, he hallucinates and we get to see his whole. His whole wall of like all the crime families, family stuff that he wanted to take out of commission. The Nucci family was the final crime family that left associated at all with his family's death. So this takes place, like I want to say, sometime after he took out all of that crime family. Let me just point out, like, Frank isn't a cool anti hero here. He's more of a broken man, actively deteriorating. This is the lowest we've ever seen him or anyone for that matter. Maybe. I mean, I challenge me this marvelmaniacpod gmail.com who has more PTSD than Frank Castle. He has a reaction to the world around him in which we don't even know because we're also behind his eyes. We're seeing what he's seeing, we're hearing what he's hearing. But we know, we notice that the streets that he's living on in little Sicily are completely out of control and reality is completely blurred for him. Like we. We go from PTSD flashbacks about his war time, and we see Curtis from the series who is one of his partners in the military and Marines, I think. And we see Karen Page, but that wasn't really her. That was an illusion. We see his daughter standing right in front of him. That was also an illusion. So like I said, we're in his shoes with him. And that's sort of like the main thing about this special. There are certain parts of it where you're wondering, well, is this even happening? And all I could say is, sadly enough, as crazy and as many people that got hurt as they did, I hope so. Because if. If this wasn't happening in his reality, he is going apeshit on a bunch of random people. We see a little bit of the city and there is this man with his little dog, and he's homeless, this man, and he's happy, he loves his dog. Okay? We see this ruthless group of jerks, may I say, part of my French, causing havoc all over the city. And I mean, everyone's causing havoc, but these guys got a bat, a baseball bat, and a prerogative to just ruin people's lives. These are regular people, but they are just as bad as any other villain we've seen in the mcu. Because when that man is feeding his dog and his. Him and his dog are having a moment for. They take the baseball cap off his head, that he has one of the few probably prized possessions of his, and they take the dog and they're messing with the dog, and he doesn't want the dog to be involved, he wants it back. The man's yelling for the dog back, and then they throw it in front of a moving bus. I don't want revenge against these guys. I just want this man to get his dog back. I. This part I had to pause here. I mean, Maybe you're like me. Anytime an animal is like. Like a dog gets killed out of violence in. In a movie or a show, it really hurts. It hits me right in the gut. And I know this show wanted you to feel that and wanted you to feel the pain that Frank's feeling. So they do something like kill a dog like that. It's just you don't see the dog. Thankfully, they don't show it. That's the one courtesy they can do for us. But that poor man did. Good God, that was. I mean, this was a short episode of what, like an episode of the Punisher could have been, but it wasn't like an episode of the Punisher. It did feel like a movie. It did feel like a special presentation. It did feel like a story that sets up who Frank is as a person going forward in the mcu, wherever else we might see him, wherever his story expands past Spider man, brand new day. Like I said, maybe, just maybe. I think I said this in my notes. Maybe he's in the movie to show up and do something and be a part of it in some way, but not really be that big a part of the movie. And he's kind of like a red herring in the trailers. So we don't know Daredevil's coming back or the Hulk is going to do something terrible or we're gonna get to see him use his ammunition and his guns to try and take down a raging Hulk that we haven't seen in nearly 10 years. Either way, Frank Castle is still moving forward and going to be in an MCU movie. And they wanted us to see this before we saw that. I mean, good God. MCU violence usually has, like, more of, like, a fantasy distance. It's like, this does not. This does not. This feels ugly, intimate, cruel, urban hopelessness. I would say Game of Thrones. This even beats, like, a gory episode of Game of Thrones. Goodfellas. One of my favorite crime movies. Maybe one of my favorite movies of all time. Very gory movie. This special outdid itself in its short run of 50 minutes. Even less. You know, with the credits. The Wire, we get to see bubbles. A moment that Frank kind of saves his bubbles from. The Wire is a really great character. If you haven't seen the Wire, the joke is you should watch it. It's a great show on hbo, and it's totally pro. It's aged well. I haven't seen it in a couple years. I'm due for a rewatch. It's a comfort show in a Weird way because they take down the bad guys. We're not going to talk too much about that, but the character's a very iconic character from that show that plays the shopkeeper or. I don't know if it's a restaurant or a shop or a. Both. You know, it's where Frank gets his coffee. In the beginning, Frank is like at his most sane, walking down the street, just grabbing a coffee as the day progresses into complete for him. And I love how Frank comes back later to help the shop guy because he's getting beat up on the corner. Frank kills all the guys that are beating him up. And then in his shop, he's begging him, save my daughter or granddaughter. Forgive me. I. I forget the relationship because of all the crazy action. He goes in and just does all this brutal stuff. He puts guys against walls, he breaks arms, he stabs dudes with little pens. And he doesn't just end lives. He takes them. And that's the difference. He takes them as slowly as he wants. He puts the meaner guys through more pain. You could tell he's orchestrated. He's careful. He's perfect at what he does. He's. And what he was trained to do, despite whether he likes the monster who he is or not, he uses his abilities to take down bad guys. And you know, what they did in this, in this short, was make the bad guys really bad guys. Street gangs, just thugs, low lives, people that you wouldn't care technically them getting hurt by the actions that they're committing. However, it doesn't change the fact of how brutal these guys are taken care of by Frank in some cases. And I got to say, it's just a. I mean, it's a point of amazement. It starts with iron man in 2008 and the standard of what this universe can contain. Is the show going to be like the comics? Is the comics. Is it going to comics going to reflect on the show? And I'm not a big comic reader. I've said that before. I want to get Marvel Unlimited. Don't have it. I have add lame excuse, but it's a fact I do. So reading the comics, little. A little sidetracked from doing that. I'd like to imagine that these are some pretty crazy comics as well. This makes me want to read some of these. You know, John Barenthal has a story, if you've seen him in interviews. He talks about going into a comic shop when he was studying the Punisher. And the guy who was running the shop knew who he was and he's like, no, don't take this, don't take this. Take this, this and this. And he really reads up on all the source material of the Punisher. He really makes it his own character. That iconic gruntiness. He goes, he roars as he's taking people apart. It's honestly kind of miraculous to see, like, is Frank a hero? Like, that's a real question. It's like, is he even a hero? Frank's does. Like, it's kind of saying, like, he saves innocent people. But the violence also follows him everywhere. He locked up his guns, if you remember, at the beginning of this, this special, because he didn't want to kill anymore. Maybe that was the idea at one last kill. Done. The Sicilians, the Nucci family, they're finished. That's my whole gang list of people who are responsible for the death of my family, which I'm still suffering for. Hence let me lock these guns away so I don't do anything bad with them. It's not going away, Frank. That's the thing. It's gonna follow him because he opened up many, many, many hives of other problems and power vacuums and all sorts of issues that come along with destroying all the gangs of New York. Fisk is now gone. Like, who is even in charge? That's why the city, Little Sicily is so out of control. It's the worst you'd ever seen it. And scary. It's scary to think that it could ever even get that bad. I mean, it's exaggerated for sure, but I'd like to think that we would have it better under control in the parts of our cities that are anywhere near this bad, even 5%, because this city is insane. It's basically like Gotham City. The things we see these, these low life degenerates do. It makes you feel kind of like on Frank's side, despite the goriness and the ruthlessness that he carries. So is it self defense? Is the woman coming telling, Frank, you killed my whole family. The Nucci family. You forgot about me putting a bounty on your head. Going to give. She gives him the middle finger. You ruined my life. You killed my innocent family. You basically stepped on her youngest kid's face. Oh my God. Frank has done some terrible things. I mean, there's the difference between Matt Murdoch and Frank Castle. And I will say that Frank and Karen Page definitely got something going on. I know Karen made a nice cool cameo in this, which I really appreciate. Cuz they've always had a connection. She was in both seasons of the show. The Punisher and they have a thing going. They've got. They've come close to kissing. The way she hugs him in this episode, it shows how much he feels about her at the very least. Kind of reminds me of Jean Gray and Cyclops being together and Wolverine on the side feeling like I'm gonna look at this picture of her. That meme. Is Frank helping or is he escalating the chaos? Is he making it worse? Like I said, this power vacuum opened up because of him and what he did. His power, his superpower, isn't turning into a big green man being the God of thunder himself, super soldier with super soldier serum, or a man in an iron suit. He is destruction. That is his power. The scariest part of this whole thing, I might have said this already, but, I mean, let's just reiterate. The scariest part is if he's hallucinating, like, what could he really be hurting? Who is he doing this to? Is he doing this to anyone? Is this just a bad dream? That's the main thing going through my head the whole time. And, you know, the special really doesn't answer that for you. There's a fine line between what Frank's imagining and what Frank's doing. And I think Frank has a wakeup call when that lady comes and says, I got a bounty on you. And people are starting to run into his apartment and look for him. There's a moment of sobriety, I think happens somewhere in there where what he's seeing is true. Just the intense heavy metal music being played over it is making it just seem like a hot fever dream of destruction and blood and gore. Getting it all in as quickly as we can in 30 full minutes of just non stop brutalizing action. Is brutalizing a word? I don't know, but now it is. I mean, let's just talk about John Barenthal for a second. Like, he really, really is for this part, in my opinion, as rdj, Iron Man, Matt, or, sorry, Charlie Cox, Daredevil. This is. John Barenthal is the Pawnet shirt. He's the definitive Punisher. And, you know, I never thought we'd see Shane from the Walking Dead become one of the most iconic characters ever put on screen. He owns this role. He puts his heart into it. He's exhausted, he's haunted, he's emotionally collapsing, still carrying his family every second. I mean, this has been years since this happened to him. He was even put together a little bit better in the second season of his show than he is now. It just goes to show that things aren't as cut and dry as they always seem. Remorse and regret and trauma follow you even past the ending, whether it's happy or not. Crazy things can happen in this world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And also, it's not exempt from being completely unfair and completely out of control. So what Frank does, in my opinion, is cleaning up the streets in his own brutal way. Does he have a moral code? Yes. No children. He. He cares about children. He wants to protect them. He sees his daughter in a. In a scene in this, and he gets to see this whole family die every time he closes his eyes. And we know that story from the show. I'm not going to spoil too much from the show, because I think if anyone really loved this, you should go back on Disney plus and just watch the Punisher. It's just such a. Such a good show. If you haven't seen Daredevil, I mean, come on. Why are you listening? You've seen it, but I'm not shaming you. Go watch it. I watched the original series. I watched the Defenders. I'd watch all of the. Literally. Jessica Jones, season one. Season two is pretty good. I haven't seen three. Probably next on my list. These are all great shows, and I think Marvel made a wise. Kevin Feige. Marvel made a wise decision to continue instead of start over and revamp. And I don't know how much the board will reset in Secret wars and after to show us different versions of these characters. Nobody wants them. We want these characters. We want these actors. They're made for these roles. And like I said, just John Bernthal owns it. And I'm proud to be a fan, proud to have known him for all this time. I wish I watched the second season of the Punisher sooner, but it was kind of great walking in from that to this because it was a. In a direct comparison to where his life is when we leave him and where his life is now. There's definitely been a mental toll that has been. That's taken on him. And I think the fact that he finished the final gang that was involved with his family's murder, I. I truly do think that he's coming undone in a way that there's nothing left for him to do. He starts to say that to his wife at his wife's grave. You know, I don't know what to do because he done. He done murdered everyone he can murder. And then comes this opportunity, this woman who wants revenge. He didn't kill the wife or the mom of the Nucci family. So she puts out this bounty. We don't know the bounty was under a $5 million bounty in the last season of the Punisher. But this season, who knows what the hell he was. People come after him. Why would he choose to live there? Is my question. Is he living there so he can like, extract justice upon. Extract is not the right word. Dish out justice? Is he there to dish out justice? Is he stuck living in crappy places because he feels like he deserves to be in a bad place? He sees himself among, among these creeps and said he doesn't want to be anywhere better because he just feels like he doesn't deserve it or something. I don't know. My biggest question right now, honestly, is how the hell does Frank fit into Spider Man? How are parents, how are parents going to react? Right? I mean, will they. Parents have gotten a lot lenient, more lenient with their kids. I wouldn't let any kid under 13 watch this. This is heavy. This was one of the most brutal things I've ever seen Marvel do. I mean, God, that was. And you know, the, the show too, the Punisher show, it has a lot of that too. But what he, what he does is so much. I didn't know I'd be coming to the mic, like, basically traumatized. Telling you how I felt about the special presentation. This is not a filibuster. This is therapy, in my opinion. Marvel wants to put out this Punisher. They want to see what audiences react to something like this. More mature, more bloody, gritty, you know, and his place in the greater MCU with crossovers like with Spider man and how that goes over amongst fans. Do people love the Punisher or do people actually hate him? And I think they might be doing a test for another show for him, seeing if people do relate or maybe a full on movie in theaters. That would be something for Frank Castle. I almost want to see that for Daredevil too. But there's so much story and there's one advantage to television and having a long time to tell greater stories and, and develop characters. And the. There's something that I wish they could do with Spider man or some of the bigger heroes. Give them an episodic run like a six, even a six episode series like Defenders, you know, for Iron man. Like if they did that post Iron Man 3 maybe right around the time of Age of Ultron. Just more character development. The more the better. That's why sometimes when there's a sequel coming out to something and people are complaining about it, they don't want their Favorite thing to be ruined. But think about all of the episodes of a TV show there are. For some characters you love, all it is is character development, and it becomes more of what you love. So I. I'm not against stuff like that. I think it's a hell of a move for Marvel to have put this out. I think they latched it on to Daredevil for a few reasons. One, he associates with Daredevil. That's how we met him originally. And two, there's a lot of gore and blood in Daredevil, but not as much as that's in this. But they're going to tag it on the end of that season so they can maybe get away with it without, like, I don't know, Mom's picking, you know, angry moms, like, standing outside of Marvel Studios saying, look at my kid. Watch. She's traumatized. You know, I almost need my mom to go out there for me, and I'm traumatized by all this stuff. I'm so curious if Daredevil isn't in. Damn. Daredevil's really not in Spider Man. Brand new day. But the Punisher is after this. I'm. I'm okay. I'm okay. All right. But I don't think that's going to be the case. You're not going to bring him in the Punisher. And without Daredevil, Daredevil is going to be Toby Maguire entering through the ring this time as. As no way Home would portray. They gotta have surprises. There's gotta be secrets, right? I think that's the secret of this. But whatever Hulk ends up doing, for some reason, I think it's gonna be like, pent up rage. I think Bruce Banner put the Hulk down just like the Hulk put him away and locked him in a little chamber and lived on Sakaar for years and became the Grandmaster's champion. Is that his name? The Grandmaster? I. I don't know if that's his name, but because I'm riffing today, guys, I'm. I'm telling you how I feel about the Punisher. I'm not, you know, reading from a script or nothing. I. I just giving you my raw reaction. And I think if Daredevil and Frank Castle slash Punisher are in Spider man and they all have to fight the Hulk, I think I'd be happy with that movie because I trust the director on that movie. He did Shangchi and the Ten Rings, so pretty great project to hand over to him. Somebody who made maybe one of the best Marvel movies that came out. Since Endgame. I love Shangi. I kind of want to watch it even now, just talking about it. Maybe he'll make a cameo. Who knows? Maybe Spider man will start his own street level Avengers of some sort. Anything can happen. So we'll see. We'll see where it goes. So the cemetery is where we also clo. We closely end the cemetery. I mean, we get. First off, the exact ending is so badass and perfect. He takes care of the guy who took the guy's dog and threw it in front of a freaking truck, and he first takes the guy's hat back. And then when the guy said that's not all he took, that was enough for Frank. He knocks the jerk on the ground, and we see from that jerk's perspective, a bullet being put into him. Maybe that one last kill matters because he's embracing the Punisher now. He's wearing the garb. He's wearing the logo. And, you know, it was associated with the task force Wilson Fist put together. They idolized Punisher. They wanted him to work with them, but Frank calls them a bunch of fanboys. So Frank's kind of taking back his logo. Who he is as an anti hero, really walking a fine line between good, bad, evil, and whatnot. Makes you think a lot. It makes me think a lot. I think he'll never get over his family. But I think if he saves people and young children and people that need saving, and, I mean, he's gonna do it the way tactically that he's been trained, how he kills people. The scariest thing about Frank Castle isn't that he kills people. It's that somewhere deep down, you. You understand why he became this. I mean, good job, Marvel. Honestly, this was something else. It was short, sweet, and to the point. Honestly, he should have just made it into a movie. Make it a little longer, give us some more character stuff. I wouldn't have mind sitting down to watch an hour and a half of this. Are you kidding me? But they really wanted to drive home the action, the pace, the. The. The brutality. A controlled, confined experience that makes you fit into Frank Castle's shoes and see things through his eyes. Something very special and something very important. And I think we're gonna see a lot of. Not fallout, but direction in one way or another, depending on how this goes over, which I think it will go over very well, and how he will fit into Spider Man. Brand new day coming out two months from now. Already this has been Marvel Maniac and MCU after show, and I don't know, it ended way too fast. And that's what she said. Sorry. It's been a lot of despair. There's been a lot of despair watching, watching this all go down. So forgive me for my one Michael Scott. That's what she said. I think it'd be great if you joined our Discord. It's in the description of this episode where we can talk about Frank Castle, what he's going to do, what his role in the MCU will be further. It'd be so crazy to see him in Secret Wars. You know, he's. He's something else, this guy. I don't know. But all I gotta say is thank you for coming by and listening. If you could rate the show, give it five stars, thumbs up and leave a comment or a review. Go goes the longest way Getting more people to listen to the podcast. I love doing it. I had a moment earlier in the week was my birthday. Birthday. Dropping it. I was thinking of how much I love doing this, how much I love talking about Marvel, how much I really honestly would be lost without this show in a way because it's an outlet for me to fully honestly just talk to you about the thing I love about Marvel. It's not that it's not like Screencrust, which I respect and watch every episode. It's not like any other Marvel content because it's just me and it's a little bit different. So be proud of yourself, be nice and kind to your own heart. Try to get some good sleep tonight after all this drama we've seen with Frank Castle. All the gore, the blood snowy awe. We saw something cool. I thought we saw something cool. I think I'd probably watch this again closer to when Spider man came out, just to get another close look at where the Punisher is before we see him in that movie. This has been a long sign off. This is Eric, aka Mr. Honest. And until next time, Avengers disassemble. Oh yeah, and the one batch, two batch Penny and a dime. Classic Frank Castle. See you next time.