Jon Bernthal Returning As ‘The Punisher’ In The MCU, Rosario Dawson Reveals

Update: Rosario Dawson has now said that she heard this “from fans,” so her big reveal should not be taken as gospel. Sigh:

Original article follows:

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While everyone is still reeling from the very good news that Charlie Cox will reprise his role as Matt Murdock/Daredevil across a host of MCU projects, including his own rebooted series, fans have a new reason to celebrate.

Jon Bernthal is apparently also returning to his original Netflix role as Frank Castle/The Punisher, at least according to Rosario Dawson, who just leaked that information at Chicago and Comic Entertainment Expo.

There is really no misinterpreting what she said in the clip below:

“I found out yesterday The Punisher was happening again, so I feel like it’s my second chance. It’s the only one of those shows I wasn’t in, and I love Jon Bernthal, so let’s all make it happen collectively, guys.”

The “let’s all make it happen” there appears to be her cameo-ing in The Punisher, not making The Punisher happen again, which already seems to be in motion, based on what she’s saying here. You can almost hear the stunned silence from the audience as she reveals something that has very much not been made public at this point, even with Disney’s grand Phase 5/6 master plan that was laid out at SDCC.

Rosario Dawson, of course, was not just a frequent star in all the non-Punisher Netflix series, but she’s also leading the Ahsoka Star Wars series for Disney Plus here. So presumably this isn’t exactly a fireable offense for her.

As for Jon Bernthal, the man’s career has positively exploded since his early days in The Walking Dead, which morphed into The Punisher, and now more recent projects like We Own This City and America Gigolo.

He has been asked about returning to the role of The Punisher in the past, which he did say he was interested in, but with some caveats. Here’s him speaking about it to THR in December of last year:

“So I was really grateful, respectful and weary of the places where that role took me and the world in which I had to live in. That being said, that’s where that character needs to be. It needs to be a level of darkness. I think if there’s any let up on that character, you do a disservice to the character, to every iteration of the character, to every comic book that’s come before, and to all of the unbelievable fans of the character. This character means so much to people in the military. So like I said before, it’s not about whether you do the character; it’s about whether you can do it right, and I’m only interested in doing it right.”

The implication here was that he would only return if they didn’t have to “Disney-ify” the character, as he was allowed to be extremely, brutally violent in his Netflix series, and anything less would not really be The Punisher at all. Disney has lately expressed more of an openness to R-rated superhero fare, putting things like Deadpool and Logan on Disney Plus. So far, that has not extended to the MCU, but it does feel like they will probably make a few exceptions for characters like The Punisher.

We’ll see if anyone has anything official to say after this leak.

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