Almost immediately after The Punisher's introduction during Daredevil Season 2, it became glaringly obvious that this character was big, bold and layered enough to carry his own series. Netflix execs grasped that pretty easily as well, with tons of rumors eventually cementing into an actual series order. Its upcoming schedule full of Marvel goodness, Netflix seemed likely to push Punisher way back to make room for The Defenders and the many seasons revolving around its four original street-level heroes, but it looks like we might get to see The Punisher sooner than expected. Like next year.
Don't go putting any permanent marker on your calendars or anything, as Netflix hasn't made any official announcements on when The Punisher Season 1 will go live. However, Netflix is the cause for this, as The Punisher already has a dedicated series page. And while searching for it on a computer's web browser will just bring up a mostly darkness with the show name and vague synopsis, this is what you'll see (as of this writing) on Netflix's mobile app.
Crazy, right? It could be that someone involved in the coding got a little overzealous when slapping that together, having missed a memo that the release year should be left the hell out of it. Or perhaps it was entered entirely in error, and we still won't get to see The Punisher until 2018 or 2019. (The thought of waiting over two years make me more than a little ill.) But there is a very good reason why the 2017 release date could be quite legitimate.
Back when all this streaming Marvel-ness was new, and fans were still reeling over Daredevil's incredible hallway fight, news slipped through EW that Season 2 would premiere in March of 2016. And that ended up being true, as March was indeed when the Man Without Fear took over our TVs for a while. It would be kind of a ridiculous coincidence if both of Jon Bernthal's Punisher projects would have their release windows leaked early, but not an unfortunate one for anybody feeling Frank Castle withdrawls.
I could use a more in-depth logline than that, considering his lead-in on Daredevil set up the story of Castle's revenge mission after his family was killed. Not that he's expected to lose all of his vengeful anger and grief just because he's getting his own TV show, but I just greedily want to know what else we can expect, and what other characters will show up. I also want to know if Punisher will be a part of the Defenders miniseries, but I guess that's not going to get answered in a synopsis.
So while we still have no real clue on when we'll next see Frank Castle putting bullets into everything around him, we're certainly hoping it happens at some point in the next 16 months. In the meantime, though, we are super-pumped about Luke Cage coming to Netflix next month on Friday, September 30. And to see when all of Netflix's other banging series are coming later this year, check out our premiere schedule.