netflix the punisher

When Jon Bernthal’s version of The Punisher debuted in ‘Daredevil’ Season 2, it was instantly apparent that Marvel and Netflix had a new hit character on their hands, as Bernthal and company seemed to have finally gotten the character right (after Lionsgate and their ilk had produced two pretty terrible ‘Punisher’ movies in the early 2000s). The big question became not whether or not Netflix was going to spin ‘The Punisher’ off into his own series, but how soon could they do it. It was a gamble as Netflix had already committed to four solo Marvel series’s leading up to a fifth team series in ‘The Defenders,’ but everyone knew they would be foolish to not use Bernthal and the character, and soon. So production began on ‘The Punisher’ series, though we remained in the dark as to when the series would debut amongst the already crowded Netflix/ Marvel schedule.

Now though, we seem to have a rough idea. We knew Netflix wanted to release ‘The Punisher’ in 2017 following ‘The Defenders,’ and now, thanks to a source who may have inadvertently let the cat out of the bag, we may know the month. According to a recent interview she had with The Hollywood Reporter about her work on ‘Fargo’, Irish director Dearbhla Walsh had the following to say when asked whether she had ever worked in North America before, which somehow led to her revealing information about when audiences could see her episode of ‘The Punisher:’

“One other time that hasn’t been aired yet, which was an episode for the new Marvel series The Punisher, which I did just before Christmas, but it’s not airing until November. I directed that in New York and edited in L.A., but this was my first directing experience in lovely Canada.”

Granted, we already figured ‘The Punisher’ would be released in November or December, especially if ‘The Defenders’ is coming out in August and Netflix is going to try to space things out, but as always, it is nice to hear some kind of confirmation of these things. And with November less than 6 months away at this point, I’m sure Netflix will be revealing more information about ‘The Punisher’ pretty soon now, so I do not think Walsh will get in too much trouble with the MCU police for letting slip that particular tidbit.