Marvel fans can’t wait to see Jon Bernthal return as the Punisher in Daredevil: Born Again, which will no doubt see him share the screen once again with Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock. However, it turns out we don’t need to wait until that Disney Plus series hits streaming for the Frank Castle star to team up with another Marvel vigilante, as Bernthal has already pulled off an epic encounter that crosses the Marvel multiverse.
As Redditors have got all giddy over, Bernthal recently met Thomas Jane — as in the star of 2004’s The Punisher. Yes, that’s two Frank Castles for the price of one. In fact, that’s one-half of the actors to ever play the character in live-action right here in the same image. The gun-toting fan favorite has also been portrayed by Dolph Lundgren in a little-remembered 1989 movie and by Thor‘s Ray Stevenson in 2008’s The Punisher: War Zone.
The pair crossed paths while teaming up at Taran Tactical this March, so unfortunately, this should not be taken as a hint that Jane will make an appearance in Born Again. Although such a casting would no doubt leave fans cheering. With no disrespect to Lundgren and Stevenson, it’s fair to say Jane’s Punisher is the most popular of the pre-MCU iterations of the character, so having him and Bernthal face off against each other would be an exciting turn of events.
As it is, this is probably one of the more unlikely multiversal crossovers we could conceivably see occur in Avengers: Secret Wars, but — who knows — maybe Bernthal can lobby Kevin Feige to make a Punisher: Across the Punisher-Verse spin-off.