At the outset of their collaboration, Marvel and Netflix went to great pains to keep fans updated and informed about how they intended to bring their ‘Defenders’ project from page to screen, and since then the two companies have stuck somewhat rigidly to their planned format. In orderly fashion, the four nominated characters that would make up the team have each been allocated their own TV series and have been given a release date, with no deviation from the initial announcement. Until, that is, the introduction of a certain Frank Castle.

Ever since it had been revealed that The Punisher would be making his onscreen comeback, after 8 years adrift in the wilderness, there was a strange feeling in the air. At first, rumors were that the planned ‘Iron Fist’ series wasn’t working out, and The Punisher had been introduced to replace Danny Rand. When this proved not to be the case, a further rumor then developed that Jon Bernthal had so impressed the studio execs with his heart-breaking interpretation of the character that they’d given him his own series purely of the strength of that. Again, this proved not to be the case.

And then, a mere month after the character’s debut, and following a series of online fan petitions it was confirmed that Bernthal was indeed being given his own series. It’s no real surprise, with his show-stealing performance moving some reviewers to suggest that the makers may as well have renamed Daredevil’s second 13 episode outing as ‘Punisher: Season 1’. So now we’ve been promised we’ll be seeing more from Frank Castle, what can we expect?

Whilst he has made appearances in a good number of mainstream crossover stories within the Marvel Comic Universe, The Punisher has very much tended to walk his own path, on the fringes of these big storylines. Anybody who read the ‘War Journal’ series that covered the events in ‘Civil War’, ‘World War Hulk’ and ‘Secret Invasion’ will be aware that the character has never been one to let bigger things get in the way of taking out smaller scumbags. And then there’s the MAX imprint, which showed the Punisher carving his merry way through a superhero-free world. Assuming that there a group of writers who are at this very moment in time, locked away in a room somewhere poring over all of this material, what can fans expect to see in a Punisher Netflix series? Let’s have a look:

10. Nick Fury

One theme that runs through the majority of the differing incarnations of The Punisher story is the inclusion of Nick Fury in his origins. The setup here is that the legendary military officer and spymaster has at some stage either crossed paths with Lt Frank Castle at an earlier point of his career, or has tasked him at some stage to perform a service for his country.

Whilst in the mainstream universe the relationship between the two men is quite clearly ‘master and servant’, in the MAX storyline, Fury is the closest thing to a friend that the vigilante has, and the two regularly help each other out of difficult situations, usually with Fury passing something useful on to Castle as payment.

With the MCU Fury having stepped back into the shadows from his formal position following the events in ‘Cap 2’, and with Sam Jackson having already cameoed once already in ‘Agents of SHIELD’, is it entirely beyond the realms of possibility that we might seem Nick seeking out one of his old pawns in order to solve a difficult modern-day problem?

9. Lady Punisher?

If there’s one thing that the Punisher’s storylines have always included its strong and confident women, and his crusade has drawn several notable female supporters to his banner. Much as with the inclusion of Karen Page and Clare Temple as strong supporting characters in ‘Daredevil’, it’s reasonable to expect that a Punisher series would want to avoid representing females as merely being permanently in peril, and want to draw a woman into Frank’s circle, to help and support him.

Browsing through the list of candidates, a few stand out, one of whom we’ll look at in more detail later on. Perhaps the strongest is Rachel Alves, a soldier who’s in the process of getting married when the wedding party is butchered in a gang conflict, leading her to become Frank’s protégé. Going in the other direction, Officer Sammy Stone was drawn to the vigilante when he saved her life, but then suffered a mental breakdown when her actions cost the lives of a number of her colleagues and members of the public. More sentimental Punisher fans will probably be hoping to see Lynn Michaels, a long-standing former cop and colleague of Frank’s, who featured in a number of 1990’s stories.

8. Weaponry

If you were a hardcore fan or, even worse a writer, sat watching and re-watching ‘Daredevil’ for Easter-eggs, the series proved fertile ground. Be it a Stilt-Man costume sat in the corner of Melvin Potter’s workshop, or the mysterious disk that Frank recovers at the end of the series entitled ‘MICRO’, the signs are that his own series will feature a bit more fantastic technology than Matt Murdock’s adventures have seen so far.

One of the common themes of a Punisher story is that Frank will have an ally providing him with computer and technical support. Microchip. Stu Clarke. Henry Russo. And it is these fine gentlemen that craft a whole range of lethal weapons for him to use. Expect to see more weird and wonderful ways of killing the opposition, in ways that Batman would recoil in horror from. Even in their absence, Castle has a tendency to recycle and re-use any tech he encounters on his travels, adapting and overcoming as any good solider should. And then there’s always the presence of that minigun that he picked up and didn’t use on the rooftops…

7. Team-Ups

As already alluded to, The Punisher usually operates at the edge of other storylines in the Marvel comics, in the streets and alleyways of the Marvel Universe, and this tends to bring him into contact with a particular sub-strata of heroes who operate at the same level that he does. Add to that the fact that he himself has been initially introduced as a supporting character for Daredevil, then what other Marvel characters might make their debut in the Punisher series?

Well top of the list, is another vigilante, one with slight mental health issues. Despite a number of attempts, we’ve still yet to see Moon-Knight make an appearance, and in the comics he and the Punisher bump into each other with no small amount of regularity. Marc Spector/Jake Lockley would be the perfect candidate to find teaming up with Frank. Then there’s always a certain red-suited mercenary, whose antics bring him into direct conflict with The Punisher. Or is it time to re-introduce the Devil’s bagman himself, Johnny Blaze, in some shape or form?

6. Down South

Having methodically shot, stabbed and exploded his way through the local Irish Mafia and Biker population, there’s also the small matter of that massive drugs cartel that Frank knocked heads with during his last outing, and Latin American gangs aren’t traditionally known to take kindly to interference in their, ahem, ‘business transactions’.
In the comics, a significant number of Punisher storylines are set in and around the US-Mexico border, as Frank’s attempts to stop and disrupt the flow of heroin into America bring him into direct conflict with its suppliers. These have produced some outstanding tales, including ‘Girls in White Dresses’, a trip to LA which saw the Cartel hiring Electro to prevent further interference from Frank, and also a truly bizarre trip across the border including Moon Knight, an undead Incan warrior and a pair of Mexican wrestlers.

5. G. W. Bridge

Whilst not always condemning or preventing the Punisher’s methods, every so often SHIELD and the Avengers have been put in situations by his actions that force them to try and capture him, and that uneviable task has fallen to a number of eccentric individuals, who have enjoyed varying levels of success.

One of the more beloved of this is former SHIELD bagman and Islamic convert, G.W.Bridge (Which may or may not stand for ‘George Washington’, dependant on how gullible you are…). A long-time servant of Nick Fury, the retired agent was approached by Tony Stark in the aftermath of Civil War to try and bring in The Punisher, who had supported Cap during the conflict. Using a combination of military and local policing tactics, the firm but fair Washington stepped out into the streets to take Castle on, and found himself not only empathising with, but also assisting the vigilante in a number of situations.

Alas, as with most people who cross paths with Castle, things would not end well for Washington, who met a tragic end when targeted by a gang trying to smoke Castle out.

4. Mob Retaliation

Forget HYDRA. No matter how hard Frank hits the Mafia, they only regroup, nominate a new leader, and try to find a way to pay their nemesis back, with varying degrees of success. Whilst the comics have seen the mainstream crime families decimated and crushed in savage super-villain conflicts, the street-level Mafiosi regenerate with alarming speed, and an endless parade of Dons and Bosses have tried to put an end to The Punisher for what he has done to them and their people.

Be it the demented Ma Gnucci, desperately trying to avenge the deaths of her sons, or the brilliant MAX storyline that saw the grieving widows of a number of mob morons banding together to handle their own payback, there’s numerous ways that the embattled Sicilian community have attempted to get revenge on their sworn enemy.

Perhaps the most notorious and unhinged of these characters is that of Nicky Cavella. Deemed too extreme even for the Mafia, following a disastrous run-in with the local Triads, the up and coming Cavella found himself and his lieutenants exiled, until desperation forced the ailing organisation to turn to him as saviour. What followed were a series of brutal ambushes and traps, which served only to further decimate the remaining mob footsoldiers, until a desperate Cavella, assisted by corrupt CIA operators, dug up the bodies of Frank’s family to try and draw Castle into direct conflict. Well, you can imagine how that panned out for him.

3. O’Brien

As a rule, you don’t tend to associate The Punisher with romance, and Kathy O’Brien is probably the closest thing you’ll find to a love interest. Initially contracted by the government as part of a team to capture and co-opt The Punisher into working with them against the Taliban, she was one of the few survivors of the resulting firefight. Her personal quest for vengeance would bring her into an alliance with the vigilante, and the pair ended up taking on her ex-husband, who had been part of the Nicky Cavella attempt on Frank’s life.

As the two societal misfits continued to cross paths, eventually O’Brien turned to Frank for comfort, and secretly bore him a daughter, which she subsequently passed into hiding, knowing that the little girl had no future with either her or Frank in their lives. As with most people associated with Castle, O’Brien would go on to lose her life in a dark and lonely place, but she would leave a lasting legacy on Frank that regularly came back to haunt the anti-hero in his future.

2. Service Record

It’s fair to say that ‘Daredevil’ did leave a lot of questions unanswered during its 13 episode run, quite possibly as a means of setting up both Elektra and Frank for further appearances. Which is great, but more than a little irritating. The worst offences all featured The Hand. What’s that big hole for in the ground? What did they do with those kids? Other than as a scary bedtime story, what practical applications does ‘Black Sky’ actually have?

But enough about that, let’s turn to Frank’s story. There are more than enough hints that prior to returning from the Middle East, Castle performed a number of deeds that bought trouble to his door. With his dying breaths, his old CO made direct reference to an event in Kandahar which still has yet to be explained. There’s also the slight issue that it’s never fully confirmed who in ‘The Blacksmith’ actually is. It’s implied that it’s Schoonover himself, but dependent on how far up the military hierarchy the conspiracy goes, it may well be a transferrable codename, that some other corrupt officer now uses.

The comics regularly find Frank combatting corruption in the army. Be it drugs trading, Super Soldier experiments or kill squads, it’s a certainty that the military conspiracy will come back to find The Punisher during his own series, and hopefully explain just what sins he has that might need forgiveness.

1.‘Cuda

The one thing that ‘Daredevil’ missed was a proper villain. Nobu was awful, to the point of becoming a pantomime villain, prior to his being ended by Stick. One of the main things that made Season 1 so successfully was Vince D’Onofrio’s amazing portrayal of The Kingpin, so it’s a mystery to me why they didn’t repeat the formula for the second series. So who are we going to see as Frank’s main opposition? Bulseye? Jigsaw? Stilt-Man?

I would lay any money on the fact the planned Punisher season will see fan-favourite Barracuda emerge from the shadows for the first time. As humorous as he is deadly, this hulking Special-Forces killer is pitched at the perfect level for a Netflix incarnation. He’d eat a super powered hero for breakfast. No really. He’d eat the motherfucker. And anyone who tried to stop him. He also has the same love of heavy weaponry and innovative ways of ending lives that The Punisher has, which would make for some pretty damn memorable fight scenes.

And one thing we’re not going to see?

Frankencastle

I’m not sure exactly what the writers were sniffing when, in the aftermath of the ‘Dark Reign’ storyline, they had the deceased Punisher stitched back together as a member of the Monster Squad. The storyline is a pet hate of Frank Fans, and one of the most ridiculous that the character has ever seen. And this is a guy who at one time had his ethnicity inexplicably altered for several issues to make him and African-American, and another was reincarnated after death to return as a laser-toting avenging angel of God. Sheesh…

So what do you guys reckon? Are we close, or way off? Sound off below!