MCU Punisher actor Jon Bernthal has no interest in making apologies – or mea culpas, if you will – for Frank Castle. Why would he, after playing him for so many years, longer than anybody before?
In fact, quite the opposite: Bernthal, as a co-writer, is going full tilt into the essence of Frank – what makes him tick and how he would react on instinct - in the Disney+ special Punisher: One Last Kill. To do that, and achieve the right tone with the right ratio of violence, he and director Reinaldo Marcus Green channeled one of The Punisher’s best-known and most influential storylines of this century and all time, frankly.
As Bernthal told Games Radar, his and Green’s “north star” for One Last Kill is the story “Welcome Back, Frank” by famed comic scribe Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. “Ennis doesn’t apologize for Frank,” Bernthal explained. Instead, the writer “subverts the hero genre by being comfortable with the ugly and gray side of heroism.”
In that honesty, Ennis finds “the truth in the sordid dust of desperation and anger.” Bernthal considers that “my north star when writing and producing Marvel Television’s upcoming Punisher special.” Added Bernthal, “Ennis and Steve Dillon gave us a character with clarity of purpose and absolute commitment, someone who channels loss into action with brutal honesty. That ferocity and vulnerability is what makes Frank endure.”
He continued, “’Welcome Back, Frank’ doesn’t ask you to love Frank; it asks you to look at him clearly, without flinching. It asks you to see Frank in all his gruesome glory and then find that same primal motivation within yourself so you can go on that journey with him. Ennis evokes that side of you that wants to go as far as Frank does for what you believe in.”
"Welcome Back, Frank" was collected into a Marvel Premiere edition, complemented by a foreword from Bernthal himself. Over the years, the story served as an inspiration in some way to each Punisher project that emerged from the pipeline.
The 2004 film starring Thomas Jane drew heavily from the storyline, borrowing beats and characters, including The Russian in the candy-striped T-shirt, played to imposing effect by wrestling legend and Super Shredder Kevin Nash. Sadly, Nash didn’t get the call when the Russian turned up in the Wasteland as one of Cassandra Nova’s soldiers in Deadpool & Wolverine.
Bits of ''Welcome Back, Frank'' also made it into Punisher: War Zone years later. The main callback to Ennis’s work was the dopey Detective Martin Soap, head of the Punisher Task Force, played by Dash Mihok. That was almost 20 years ago, when the role of Frank seemed barely welcome at all in Hollywood.
Now in 2026, he will have quite the year with appearances in Daredevil Born Again, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and his Disney+ special.
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