The Punisher

I didn't have high hopes for the latest Marvel series on Netflix, so I was not prepared for this to shoot right up near the top of the list in terms of quality.

I never cared for The Punisher as a character, for those who don't know, the short version of his bio is as follows: Frank Castle is a cool soldier guy whose family is killed by criminals, this makes him so mad he dons a suit with a skull on it and goes around straight up executing every criminal he sees with an assortment of powerful firearms.

It's a concept that certainly attracts thirteen year old boys and men with anger issues, but isn't actually very interesting and yet he has stuck around in one form or another, including a bizarre stretch where he was a Frankenstein's monster type thing, for going on forty years now I think.

His appearance in Daredevil season 2 didn't thrill me either, basically showing the same story as his comic book incarnation, and being an uncommunicative loner who goes from enemy to friend to enemy was very tiresome.

Turns out that there is a lot more to Frank than meets the eye, Punisher starts out with Frank Castle assumed dead along with all of those who killed his family and our hero living more or less quietly as Pete Castiglione, a quiet construction worker who puts in a lot of overtime and doesn't sleep well at all. It isn't long of course before he is pulled back into his vigilante career and thinks spiral from there. Turns out there was more to his tragedy than meets the eye, it goes higher than you think, and there are all kinds of betrayals and what have you.

That premise would be enough for a reasonably decent action story, nothing phenomenal, but real draw for me in the Netflix Marvel stories isn't usually what is being told so much as the themes the story is being used to explore. Daredevil addressed issues of economic inequality, specifically in terms of housing and access to legal assistance. Jessica Jones was about sexual assault and consent, Luke Cage about black issues, not just racism but an exploration of black culture. Iron Fist and the Defenders explored themes of privilege and did so kind of poorly, which is why those shows weren't received to well in my opinion, without that theme being strongly addressed we just had some okay actors with okay fight scenes.

The Punisher is about PTSD and veterans issues in general, it's about learning to adjust to society and figuring out how to even start talking about trauma, it's about people figuring out who they are when they don't have something to shoot. Frank Castle is tormented by what he has lost, but at least as much by what he has done, and he doesn't know how to live with that, he wasn't trained on how to come home and he wasn't trained to admit that he might need help, he's a badass who can kill a roomful of dudes in seconds, but he can't sleep through the night. It is never even hinted that the path he is on is healthy for him and it is true.

I am having a hard time putting it into words and I think it would be cool to hear from a veteran if the show has a similar impact on them, but I think that it is one of the more mature and thoughtful shows to come out and that is saying something considering the source material.