Netflix has released the first teaser for The Punisher, a 30-second montage of scenes from the upcoming series which debuted early this morning at the end of the streaming service’s latest Marvel series, The Defenders.
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“All the things that I’ve done… memories, they never hurt me,” Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle intones over video of his character demolishing a cement floor with a sledgehammer. “The past is more than memories — it’s the devil you sold your soul to. He’s comin’. He’s comin’ to collect.” As the teaser ends, the camera pans out to reveal that he had been signing his work, hammering his iconic skull logo into the floor, presumably as a message to anyone who stands in his way.
Storywise, there’s not a lot to glean from the clips we see in between shots of Frank’s performance as a one-man demolition team, though the teaser does reveal/confirm that Frank’s pre-Punisher past in the military will be shown, presumably in flashback sequences.
Perhaps most importantly, we get the sense of the level of violence audiences can expect from the anticipated solo series. From shotgun blasts to the chest to an execution-style murder and more, if you had any doubt at all that The Punisher might shy away from the character’s signature approach to fighting crime, one viewing of this teaser should assuage your fears.
“It’s an interesting predicament. To put him as the central character is interesting,” Bernthal said of the Punisher helming his own show in a recent interview. “I think that my big struggle with him is that one of my biggest kind of things that I’m always fighting for on set is, I always want to preserve the essence of Frank, and have the right and be bold enough to really turn my back on the audience, and not do things to win the audience’s favor, but rather stay true to the character and the essence of who he is.”
“I think Frank is brutal. Frank is damaged. Frank is tortured,” Bernthal continued, essentially describing the character as he describes himself in the new teaser. “I think Frank, when he engages in violence, there’s something utterly satisfying and addictive for him to be doing that, and that may not be something that the audience can agree with or get behind.”
Developed by showrunner Steve Lightfoot, The Punisher will star Jon Bernthal, Ben Barnes, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Amber Rose Revah, Deborah Ann Woll, Daniel Webber, Jason R. Moore, Paul Schulze, Jaime Ray Newman and Michael Nathanson.