The announcement that Season Two was confirmed was no real surprise. The quality of the show, the top-notch performances by almost all of the actors and the generally positive social media response pretty much guaranteed that we’d be seeing more of "The Punisher." But will the writers learn and move on from where they left a bloody and battered Frank Castle, or will they just repeat the same tone and story beats?
The best thing about season One, apart from the extraordinary performance from the brilliant Jon Bernthal, was that it firmly grounded the character and gave fans multiple ways of viewing him.
It became clear that he may be called the Punisher, but the person Frank Castle punishes the most is himself.
This theme ran throughout and was echoed with the cracking portrayal of Micro (Ebon Moss-Bachrach). Both Frank and Micro literally punish themselves more than any of their enemies, which is a great take on the character and not the direction most people expected them to take with this show. Micro, in particular, takes his self-punishment to extreme levels, watching his family fall apart due to his mistakes as he helplessly watches. It was as brutal to watch as any bone snap, and that’s why Micro needs a severely reduced role for Season 2 if he even appears at all.
Eye gougingly good
"The Punisher" comics have a vast array of side characters to choose from, and although Micro may be the most easily adaptable, it would be nice to expand the Netflix/Marvel Universe a bit and explore other people in that world.
Introducing Micro was clearly vital in terms of fan service and (more importantly) to humanize Frank.
That job is done, and Frank now needs to lose a little more of his humanity for Season 2, thereby tackling one of the most persistent criticisms that Season 1 wasn’t violent enough. "Punisher" fans wanted to drop straight into the jaded, death-numb serial killing monster, but this way we’ll get to see his slow deterioration as he gradually loses more of his humanity.
As with "Jessica Jones," "The Punisher" took great pains to explore the notion of PTSD. With "Jessica Jones" it was the after-effects of an abusive relationship, in "The Punisher" it was how to cope with being a trained soldier returned to civilization and forgotten.
In Season 1 of "The Punisher," we saw this brilliantly explored through the character of Lewis Wilson.
His well-paced deterioration and great performance are some of the reasons why Season 1 is one of the best of the Netflix shows. However, that has been explored now, and it’s time to move on.
Frank has his vengeance (almost everyone involved in the slaughter of his family is dead apart from Billy), and so now it’s time to see him deal properly with gangsters and street-level criminals. There's no need to give us Billy until Season 3 (even though Jigsaw is all set up and ready to go). Having had a quick nod to Ma Gnucci, it would be criminal (ahem) not to explore that route. Plus, it might give us the opportunity to see a live action version of Castle punching a Polar Bear in the face.
Lose the dead weight
Perhaps the best way to really fight back against the criticism is to start Season 2 with a bang that knocks Frank out of his comfort zone and into full-on punishment mode. The most logical way to do this is to have Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) die in episode one.
She’s consistently the most annoying character in the Netflix shows, and although it’s not the actresses fault that the writers have no idea how to use her as anything other than an exposition machine, her screen time must surely come to an end soon. Maybe it's just annoying that she randomly wandered into a newspaper building and got given a groovy office and enough clout that she can argue with the editor without getting sacked.
However, if it’s a choice between Karen Page and Dinah Madani (Amber Rose Revah), who was 100 percent the weakest element of Season One, then please just kill Madani. She was the most inept and useless member of law enforcement ever seen on-screen (seriously, not one plan worked, not one idea came to fruition and it was only by fluke that she ended up in a room with Frank Castle).
These are just minor gripes for a consistently excellent first season of "The Punisher." Let’s just hope that the writers don’t start to rely on the good faith they’ve accumulated.
