How ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Sent Fans Straight Back to Frank Castle on Disney+
Jon Bernthal’s decade-long run as Frank Castle has been one of the most quietly persistent success stories in Marvel history. From a supporting role in Netflix’s ‘Daredevil’ back in 2016 to headlining his own two-season series, the skull-vested vigilante carved out a devoted fanbase long before Disney ever claimed the character for its own streaming platform. That loyalty never fully went away, and right now, it is showing up very clearly in the charts.
‘Marvel’s The Punisher‘ has found its way back into the top 10 TV shows on Disney+, a resurgence that tracks directly with the wave of renewed interest in Frank Castle following the Disney+ Special Presentation, ‘The Punisher: One Last Kill.’ The original Netflix series, which ran from 2017 to 2019, has been available to stream on Disney+ since the platform consolidated the Marvel Defenders Saga titles, and viewers are clearly catching up before diving into everything the character has been part of recently.
The binge-back surge is easy to understand once you account for everything Bernthal has been doing with the role this year. ‘One Last Kill’ arrived two months before the series re-entered the top 10, with Frank Castle attempting to move past vigilantism until crime lord Ma Gnucci, played by Judith Light, drags him back into conflict. The Special Presentation reached number one on Disney+ worldwide within a single day of its release on May 12, earning a Rotten Tomatoes Certified Fresh score of 75 percent, topping the original series’ critical reception, alongside an 87 percent audience score.
That momentum fed directly into ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’, where Bernthal made his MCU big-screen debut as the Punisher. The film opened to $360 million domestically, breaking the all-time opening weekend record that ‘Avengers: Endgame’ had held since 2019. Numbers of that scale do not just reflect Spider-Man’s popularity, they tell the story of a franchise firing on all cylinders, and Frank Castle’s inclusion was a major part of the conversation leading up to release.
Getting the Punisher to feel credible inside a PG-13 Spider-Man movie was a challenge Bernthal took seriously from the start. Speaking to Variety, he explained his approach: “I was very clear with Destin: we have to believe that he would be able to walk off the set of ‘One Last Kill,’ and be that same guy walking onto the set of ‘Brand New Day,’ while also honoring that tonally it’s a much different project. I deeply appreciated that Amy Pascal, Destin and Tom Rothman all wanted the exact same thing.” Bernthal also acknowledged during an appearance on ‘Today’ that he was “enormously protective” of the character as Frank Castle made the leap from the TV-MA world of ‘The Punisher’ and ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ into Spider-Man’s comparatively sunlit universe.
The original series holds an average critical score of 64 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, though audiences rated it a much warmer 79 percent on the Popcornmeter, reflecting the kind of devoted fan loyalty that tends to outlast any critical consensus. Created by Steve Lightfoot, the show pushed the MCU into brutal thematic territory, drawing comparisons to the psychological complexity of ‘Taxi Driver’ and the action ethos of ‘John Wick’. For many viewers coming in fresh off ‘One Last Kill’ or ‘Brand New Day’, going back to the original series is less a nostalgia trip and more essential context.
With Frank Castle’s theatrical debut now behind him and a report that Marvel has already begun development on a new Punisher project, the character’s place in the MCU feels more secure than ever. Whether it takes the form of a second Special Presentation or a full series revival, the streaming numbers make one thing plain: audiences are not done with Frank Castle. What do you think the next chapter for the Punisher should look like, and does seeing him back in the Disney+ top 10 make you want to revisit the original series before whatever comes next?
