For fans of Marvel’s Punisher, the arrival of November’s Netflix series simply cannot come quickly enough. Thankfully, a project that until recently was so shrouded in a thick layer of secrecy has suddenly become a great deal more accessible, with a flood of new material finding its way online within the past few weeks.
First up were a number of high definition photos showing Jon Bernthal decked out in full costume, kicking ass and taking names in some official set pictures.
These were accompanied by an updated promotional logo for the project, and then that heart-rendingly emotional teaser trailer hidden at the end of ‘The Defenders’ debut season.
Since then, the show’s official Twitter account has gone on to reveal the titles of all 13 episodes of the first season, quite randomly using morse code as a means of doing so.
Finally, a more artistic trailer landed last week, showing off character portraits including a first peek at both Billy ‘Jigsaw’ Russo and Frank’s ally Micro.
There doesn’t seem to be any sign of this flood of new material stopping either, as today Empire Magazine release an official photo of Frank Castle decked out in full combat gear, in what appears to be a flashback to his pre-‘Daredevil’ service in the military:
From the few brief hints in the teaser trailer, and a wide variety of differing haircuts and facial hairstyles that Bernthal has been seen wearing on set, it was already evident that the series would be heading backwards in time to explore the darker sides of Frank’s past. We’ve already seen shots of him apparently interrogating prisoners at a Black Ops site, and fighting with slimy CIA spook Rawlins amidst a crowd of fellow soldiers.
The horrors witnessed by Castle during his tours of Vietnam are an essential part of the Punisher mythology in the character’s source material, and so it’s both exciting and a little terrifying to see the show updating those seminal original stories to a modern setting in the Middle East.
The dying words of his old Commanding Officer made it clear that Frank’s illicit past actions had somehow directly contributed to the deaths of his family. Add to that an absence of super-powered characters, and a states commitment by the show-runners to do justice to a character so much maligned in previous cinematic outings, it’s clear that this storyline is going to go to some derk and horrifying corners of the MCU.
All 13 episodes of Season 1 of ‘The Punisher’ will be released at some point in November.