At first glance, the first promo for the Marvel Special Presentation starring the Punisher is classic Frank Castle. The image consists almost entirely of a close-up of Jon Bernthal as Frank, his sad eyes peering out from a weathered, bearded face, shot in grainy black and white. Unhealed cuts and dried blood mark his visage, suggesting that Frank has been out there once again, punishing the guilty.

But two things jump out to the eagle-eyed viewer. First is the release date May 12, 2026, which tells us the special will hit Disney+ just two and a half months before Frank teams up with Peter Parker on July 31 in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The second is the title, The Punisher: One Last Kill, which promises some good ol’ Punisher-style heroic murder, but just one. Together, those elements suggest that maybe Punisher’s going to put his lethal ways behind him before he gets to hang out with more family-friendly MCU stars like Spider-Man and the Hulk.

To fans of Bernthal’s take on Frank Castle, that change seems drastic and potentially even wildly out of character. Bernthal debuted as Frank in the season 2 premiere of the Netflix series Daredevil in 2016. As Daredevil, along with his friends Karen Page and Foggy Nelson, investigates the brutal killings of various gangs in Hell’s Kitchen, they meet the Punisher, a one-man army. Although Daredevil also stands against these gangs, and certainly deals out plenty of physical punishment himself, his Catholic beliefs prevent him from actually killing his enemies, which Frank considers weak and counter-productive.

In a powerful sequence taken directly from the comics, Punisher knocks out Daredevil and chains him to a wall. Frank takes sniper aim on a criminal that Matt wants to prosecute through the legal system and offers Daredevil a choice: either pull the trigger on the gun strapped to his hand and shoot the Punisher or let Frank kill the criminal.

That interaction defines this version of the Punisher. Throughout the rest of Daredevil‘s second season, and across the two seasons of the Punisher Netflix series, Frank Castle is the hero who kills people, the one who was so pushed over the edge by the murder of his children that he understands anything less than eradication to be a half-measure in the fight against evil. Frank even seemed to be holding that position in the MCU, as he only stopped killing in the finale of Daredevil: Born Again at Matt’s insistence.

Frank plays that role well in the weird, R-rated corner of the Netflix Marvel shows, and in the TV-MA world of Born Again, which is largely separate from the rest of the MCU. But Spider-Man: Brand New Day is securely an MCU show, one that has Spider-Man, the Hulk, and seems to be introducing the X-Men. The movie probably can’t handle a hero who thinks that bad guys need to be shot to death.

One Last Kill might present a turning point for Frank. Whatever happens in the special, a single stand-alone episode set between Born Again‘s first season and Brand New Day, he may come to realize that killing does not in fact solve everything.

The Punisher: One Last Kill streams on Disney+ on May 12, 2026.

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