The Punisher has come to collect.
Frank Castle’s fearless alter-ego, a vigilante who is essentially death incarnate, is seen hunting his prey in today’s all-new promo for the forthcoming Marvel spinoff. Introducing us to a remote woodland area, this pre-Punisher scene has Jon Bernthal’s one-man-army track a squadron of soldiers (US Marines, perhaps?) and execute them one by one. What makes this clip particularly noteworthy is the way in which it’s filmed, as the footage flits between kinetic cutaways and first-person shots of Castle staring down the camera to deliver the grave threat, “I’m coming for you.”
Assuming The Punisher hews close to the Marvel comics, and we’re inclined to believe it will, that ‘who’ in question likely has something to do with the brutal murder of Frank’s wife and children, as it’s this defining, downright unspeakable homicide that ships our titular anti-hero off on a bloodthirsty quest for revenge.
It’s a short, yet effective tease of what’s to come, and because the official Punisher Twitter account captioned this promo with “surprise,” we imagine these next two or three weeks will bring forth plenty of new content – content that ditches the fantastical elements of Marvel’s Defenders series.
What’s more, in case you missed it, we recently learned the identity of all 13 episode titles…in Morse Code. Granted, it didn’t take long before fans deciphered the messages, confirming those monikers to be: “3 AM,” “Two Dead Men”, “Kandahar”, “Resupply”, “Gunner”, “The Judas Goat”, “Crosshairs”, “Cold Steel”, “Front Toward Enemy”, “Virtue of the Vicious”, “Danger Close”, “Home”, and “Memento Mori”.
The Punisher‘s release date is currently redacted, which is rather fitting for a show that largely centers on a city-wide investigation. New York Comic Con is just around the corner though, so there’s a very good chance Marvel and Netflix have one or two surprises in store. Perhaps all 13 episodes of the Jon Bernthal-fronted spinoff will drop online without much fanfare? Time will tell.