Bernthal and director Reinaldo Marcus Green dive into the brutal streaming special.

The Punisher, as told by the Punisher: Jon Bernthal on the inspiration fueling the ‘dark version’ of One Last Kill

Bernthal and director Reinaldo Marcus Green dive into the brutal streaming special.

By Nick Romano

Nick Romano

Nick Romano is a senior editor at ** with 15 years of journalism experience covering entertainment. His work previously appeared in Vanity Fair, Vulture, IGN, and more.

EW's editorial guidelines

May 13, 2026 3:10 p.m. ET

Leave a Comment

Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle in 'The Punisher: One Last Kill'. Credit:

- Jon Bernthal calls *The Punisher: One Last Kill* "a dark version," "a psychologically complex version," and "a pretty brutal version" of Frank Castle.

- The actor, co-writer, and executive producer points out the real psychological condition that inspired the story.

- Director Reinaldo Marcus Green and Bernthal discuss shooting that striking one-shot on the streets of New York City.

**Warning: This article contains spoilers from *The Punisher: One Last Kill*.**

Jon Bernthal remains blown away by the fact that Marvel Studios let him realize a darker vision of his comic-book vigilante. It's hard to imagine how much darker the Punisher of the Disney-owned house of the Avengers could become, but *The Punisher: One Last Kill*, a new streaming special that just arrived on Disney+, sees Frank Castle at his lowest.

He finally finished what he set out to do: Kill everyone who had a hand in the slaughter of his loved ones. The Gnucci crime family (a name pulled directly from Marvel comics) was the last on his list. Now, as New York City plunges into discord due to the power vacuum left by their vacancy, the skull-emblazoned gunman is ready for one last kill — himself.

It's a story Bernthal conceived himself. He also co-wrote the script with his *King Richard* and *We Own This City* director, Reinaldo Marcus Green; executive produced the special; and, of course, starred in it. The actor's personal stamp is all over this.

"It's a dark version, it's a psychologically complex version, and ultimately it's a pretty brutal version," Bernthal tells ** backstage at New York City's August Wilson Theatre, where he's currently starring in Broadway's *Dog Day Afternoon*. "But I hope it takes Frank to a place where he can now start to knock on the door of fighting for things like justice and for other people and honoring his family in that way."

It's been seven years since Bernthal headlined his own Punisher series on Netflix, but he formally came back into the fold as Frank Castle with *Daredevil: Born Again*. He "took a hand in writing" his big scene with Charlie Cox's Matt Murdock in that first season, he says, after which he pitched the heads of Marvel a vision for the story he wanted to tell next.

Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle in 'The Punisher: One Last Kill'.

Courtesy of Marvel

Since his original casting, Bernthal grew close to a group of Marine Raiders, including Nick Koumalatsos, who's a producer on *One Last Kill* and appears as one of the many hallucinations plaguing Frank. Bernthal and Koumalatsos had a conversation a few years back about what rock bottom can look like for a military veteran. Rock bottom for Koumalatsos, who served 12 years in the United States Marine Corps., made him consider suicide, which he wrote about in his book, *Excommunicated Warrior: 7 Stages of Transition*.

"The story just really weighed on me and really affected me," Bernthal says. "And then talking to Nick a ton, I came up with this idea for Frank."

'Daredevil: Born Again' season 2 finale: Showrunner talks set leaks, season 3 setup

Krysten Ritter on that 'Daredevil: Born Again' finale character reveal

Frank's mental state in *The Punisher: One Last Kill* is inspired by anomie, a condition many veterans often face when they transition back to society after a highly structured life in the armed forces. It's a general state of "normlessness," marked by a breakdown of social norms. For Frank, it contributes to PTSD-spawned hallucinations. In the depths of his despair, figures from his past — including previous *The Punisher* stars Jason R. Moore as Curtis Hoyle, and *Daredevil* vet Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Page — come back to haunt him.

"Unreliable narrator" is the phrase Bernthal often used in developing this narrative arc.

"It is such a symptom of that condition," he says of anomie. "There were, unfortunately, many more hallucinations that were in the script. We just didn't really have the bandwidth and the time to get them all in. But, yes, we really wanted to introduce this idea of him cracking and that you couldn't really trust what he was seeing."

One of the few exchanges that is real is the sudden emergence of Judith Light as Ma Gnucci. She tracks Frank down at his apartment complex to inform him of the bounty she placed on his head for killing her loved ones. Now every local criminal in the area converges on his location, forcing Frank to fight through swarms of assailants in his building.

Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle in 'The Punisher: One Last Kill'.

Marvel/Disney+

Green says the Gnucci family was something Bernthal had loaded in his back pocket. "It's something that's happened in a lot of American cities that I've lived in," the actor says. "When you really target organized crime, sometimes what it does is it leaves a power vacuum in the streets, and you get crime of desperation and crime that's completely disorganized, which is chaos. I have a lot of different feelings about organized crime."

Frank is oblivious to that, Bernthal continues — at least initially. "He forgot about Ma, and now he's created a monster in the same way that he was created. He caused the very same monster: the hunger for revenge, the hunger for blood. I think going forward, that's gonna be a real enemy for him, a real adversary."

Ma Gnucci remains a prominent figurehead from the Punisher comics, which both Bernthal and Green wanted to honor. The director, who lives in London, traveled back home to New Jersey once he told his mother that he would be making *One Last Kill*. Sitting on the top of his boxed-up comic collection that he shares with his brother were the Punisher specials.

"Was this fate?" Green recalls thinking. "We hadn't opened this suitcase in 25 years. What do you mean that those were at the top of the pile? It was very, very strange and sort of kismet."

"I really feel like this special almost could be a comic book," Bernthal adds. "That's why Robert is so important. Each frame tells a story in the same way that a comic book does. That was really important to me."

Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle in 'The Punisher: One Last Kill'.

Marvel/Disney+

One example is a tracking shot filmed on the streets of New York City. Frank, with his hood up, walks down a sidewalk as all manner of violence breaks out in the blurred periphery. It goes back to the question of whether what he's seeing is real or not, which becomes murkier by the end when an internal glimpse inside Frank's mind reveals all he can hear are the sounds of military warfare.

Bernthal wrote it as a one-shot, but Green was initially resistant to the idea. "I didn't know we were gonna be able to accomplish it on the New York City streets, and we were running out of time," he notes.

"It was a tremendously difficult shot to get. We tried a few times, and when we got it, we knew we got it," Bernthal acknowledges. "This was not a big-budget movie. We shot this whole thing in less time than it takes to do an episode of one of these shows. We had a smaller budget. It was such an incredible group of people who made this show. Such an unbelievable amount of dedication and purpose."

***Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our ******EW Dispatch newsletter******.***

The last shot of *One Last Kill* sees Frank back in the Punisher suit. He intervened to save the life of a young girl who reminded him of his own daughter and now seems determined to take justice for those who can't get it themselves. The next time we'll see the character is in this year's *Spider-Man: Brand New Day*, which Bernthal admits he needs to be careful when discussing at this stage.

"The first conversation I had with Destin [Daniel Cretton, the film's director] is he wanted to know exactly what was going on in this special. And I really appreciate that," Bernthal says. "Obviously, tonally these are gonna be very different pieces, but it was really important to me that you bought that the same guy could walk off one set to the other."

*The Punisher:* *One Last Kill *is now streaming on Disney+.

- Superhero TV Shows

Original Article on Source

Source: “EW Superhero”