The Punisher Review: The Rest is Silence (Season 1 Episodes 9-13)

The final five episodes of Marvel’s latest Netflix offering The Punisher are a vast improvement over the first eight, if only by virtue of the fact that stuff actually happens in them.

The series’ disparate plotlines are all finally brought together into something almost resembling a single story, full of the insanely over the top violence we’ve come to expect. It’s almost enough to redeem what came before. Almost.

At the very least, the insanely over the top violence has some semblance of a purpose, rather than just serving as something to pass the time until we got to the end of the story. (I really did not like the middle of this season, can you tell?)

The endgame sequence of The Punisher may be messy and generally predictable, but it’s more interesting to watch than the episodes that came before it.

Part of the reason for that is there’s much less pointless talking. It’s also the fact that it focuses so heavily on relationships, where it’s generally a much stronger show.

The Punisher’s end, unsurprisingly, focuses on his need for vengeance against his former best friend, Billy Russo, as well as the villainous Agent Orange. This, naturally, takes some time, as well as a few knock down, drag out shootouts.

Meanwhile, Micro gets reunited with his family, who are surprisingly chill about him having pretended to be dead for a year.

Lewis, the troubled young man from Curtis’ veterans support group, somehow becomes a domestic terrorist, plotting to blow up people to show his support of the Second Amendment.

The Lewis subplot is such a great example of the mixed bag that is The Punisher’s final five episodes.

It represents an admirable attempt to tie the series’ disparate storylines back together in a meaningful way. Yet, it’s also lazy, and makes very little attempt to explain Lewis’ spiral from “troubled” straight to “extremely dangerous.”

On the upside, it brings Karen back into the narrative, as she’s the reporter Lewis becomes obsessed with and directly threatens. It also provides some of the most affecting scenes in the entire series, as Frank realizes Lewis is targeting Karen, and vows to save her.

However, it also forces Karen into the ridiculous role of the series’ anti-gun control mouthpiece, based solely on the fact that she shot and killed a guy who threatened her in Daredevil Season 1. 

The sequence isn’t subtle, and fits awkwardly around her character, who spends most of the show trying to talk Frank out of his various killing sprees.

(It also doesn’t help that the one character The Punisher decides to make explicitly pro-gun control is also a hypocritical coward. Nuance really isn’t this show’s strong point.)

Despite this thematic awkwardness, the episodes which focus on Frank’s obsessive determination to save the one person he still sees as family are the best of the season.

Those episodes also serve as another reminder that for all the blood The Punisher spills, its most impactful scenes are almost never the violent ones. (There’s only so many ways Frank can shoot a guy, after all.)

What you’ll remember after the credits roll aren’t the hails of bullets, but rather the quiet moments where we get to see the man behind the Punisher, that Frank Castle is so much more interesting than the over hyped, bellowing killing machine.

Frank’s scenes with Karen have generally been the best thing about The Punisher. Perhaps this is because Jon Bernthal and Deborah Ann Woll have great chemistry, or that their characters have a history together that we’ve actually seen.

Maybe it’s because their relationship is one of the few things in Frank’s life that’s about looking forward, not back. Karen challenges Frank in a way that few other figures in this universe do. (Matt Murdock excepted, but he’s not here right now.)

The fight scenes in this final run of episodes are almost laughably violent — epic in scale, one features Frank single-handedly taking on a squadron of mercenaries, and killing them in increasingly dramatic fashion.

There are head shots and body shots, throat-slashings and explosions. Men are shot five or six times each, as they crawl through blood with their intestines hanging out.

Another sequence involves Frank’s long awaited confrontation with dirty CIA agent William Rawlins, which culminates in a scene where Frank puts the man’s eyes out with this thumbs.

(This is all after he’s been beaten and tortured within an inch of his life, by the way. I’d love to know what this show’s budget for fake blood is.)

To call these scenes gratuitous is putting it mildly.

Perhaps there are viewers for whom watching Frank cover himself in the blood of countless faceless and nameless minions is a good time.

There are probably folks who find his take-down of Rawlins — whose motivations still barely go beyond mustache-twirling — satisfying. I do not, but I hope someone out there does.

Billy Russo fully assumes his role as Frank’s primary adversary, but as a bad guy, he remains remarkably bland. Outside of a few complaints focusing on how rough he had it growing up, he still has little reason for his behavior.

Apparently, he just really likes money.

Somehow that’s enough to justify every action he takes in service of getting more of it, even if it means letting his BFF’s family die. (The flashbacks here make Russo’s turn to the dark side even more confusing. Yes, he’s a narcissist, but we also see he’s a real part of the Castle clan.)

Russo ends the series horribly disfigured after a final lengthy and violent fight, which can only mean he’ll return to seek vengeance at some point in the future. Perhaps giving him a concrete reason to hate Frank will make their adversarial relationship more compelling, but I doubt it.

The Punisher ends with Frank speaking to Curtis’ veterans group, and finally admitting that he’s afraid of who he is without a war to fight. It’s a quiet way to wrap up such a loud show, but it’s incredibly affecting.

Bernthal, of course, deserves all the credit in the world for selling the gaping hole of pain at the heart of Frank Castle. The final moment implies that perhaps there’s a different kind of future for this man, that he can do the work to heal.

Of course, there are enough loose ends still out there that Netflix could give The Punisher a second season, but I hope it doesn’t. This moment feels like a good place to leave Frank Castle –- one that’s made out of possibility, rather than despair.

Of course Bernthal’s too good an actor for the Marvel universe to retire his Punisher that quickly. (Plus, the show really bent over backward to explain how this man is not in jail for the rest of his life, along with all the reasons why that’s really totally okay despite his high body count.)

Therefore, it seems a given that he’ll be back in some form eventually, whether on his own series or as part of Daredevil or Jessica Jones.

Here’s hoping that the folks in charge finally realize that the thing that makes his character interesting isn’t how many times he can fire a gun.

Stray Thoughts:

• Man, a lot of people survive what seem to be direct and dangerous gunshot wounds really easily in this series.
• How many times can Frank get shot and still keep going?
• Micro’s friendship with Frank is another highlight of the series, particularly given how different the two men are from one another.
• It’s a shame we never really see a proper reunion between Frank and Sarah once she knows his true identity.
• I’m still not sure what the point of Russo and Madani’s romantic relationship is. They never seem to actually like each other that much, so her realization that he was a monster had almost zero emotional impact.
• Madani’s an interesting character and pops up a lot in the season’s final episodes, but still feels…almost extraneous to what’s going on. It’s a shame.

What did you think of The Punisher? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

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The Punisher is now streaming on Netflix.

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