Jon Bernthal returns as Punisher in Disney Plus’ Daredevil: Born Again

Jon Bernthal will return as Frank Castle — aka the killer vigilante the Punisher — in Daredevil: Born Again, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Bernthal will join Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio, reprising their roles as Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk, respectively. All three delivered iconic turns as those characters in Netflix’s Daredevil, which ran on that streaming service from 2015-2018; with Bernthal starring in his own two-season The Punisher spinoff.

When Netflix’s Marvel shows all went on the chopping block in 2019, fans assumed they’d never see those particular actor/character pairings again — Disney seemed to be angling for family-friendly Marvel content only on its spanking-new streaming service Disney Plus, and the question of whether the Netflix shows were even canon with the rest of the MCU was an open one.

But not so much anymore! Cox appeared in Spider-Man: No Way Home and She-Hulk, and and D’Onofrio briefly in Hawkeye; and last summer Marvel Studios announced that their story would continue in Daredevil: Born Again, a whopping 18-episode TV series that would premiere on Disney Plus in spring of 2024.

At the moment, the only clue for what to expect of the series is its title, which references a classic arc by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli where the Kingpin, having learned Daredevil’s identity, sets about methodically ruining his life — and the Punisher doesn’t appear at all. Elements of Born Again served as the partial inspiration for season 3 of Daredevil on Netflix, but did not get a full adaptation, so it may be that the title is less of a comic book reference, and more of a metatextual one: After half a decade, Marvel’s Netflix shows live once more.