Returning volunteer Isaac Cave goes back to the days of his first article, and gives us his two pence on the next instalment of ‘Marvel’s The Punisher’.
So, we’re back ladies and gents with Frank Castle in season two of ‘Marvel’s The Punisher’ and while I’ve been anticipating its release for some time, I think it’s incredibly inconsiderate of Netflix to release such a great distraction right in the middle of exam season. Nevertheless, in my very first article, I considered season one to be one of the best Netflix Originals, filled to the brim with enough gritty violence to keep any action lover entertained. After sitting through all thirteen episodes, I need make the following clear. Is season two good? Yes. Is it better than season one? No.
Whilst there are lots of small reasons why this new season lacked substance, I put it down to two main problems. The first being, the commencing plot of season two is still largely based around the never-ending fallout from season one. It opens with Frank beginning to settle down, Agent Madani running her division and Billy Russo broken and suffering from short term memory loss and although this shouldn’t have been a problem, to me, it felt like the new parts of the series were being overshadowed. The new characters and cleverly thought out sinister scheming never really get its chance to shine and at times it all just feels a bit muddled.
The second reason is the action scenes. It’s not that they aren’t gory or well-choreographed, they simply don’t hit with the same impact as they used to. Season one’s first big fight was intense, it felt like you could feel every single blow and although season two has characters who can take crazy amounts of punishment, it just doesn’t live up to my expectations.
Director, Patty Jenkins, also made the decision to break up a lot more dialogue with insight into the characters’ psyche and while this works, personally I don’t watch The Punisher to explore the depths of the human character, for the same reason I wouldn’t eat at McDonalds to lose weight.
Despite what I’ve just said, don’t take it that season two isn’t worth it because it is still very well directed and Jon Bernthal plays Frank excellently. It’s a fun time killer that is good for a bit of down time in-between assessments and exams. It will be interesting to see what they do with The Punisher and if it will be cancelled like the rest of the Marvel TV properties (thanks a lot Disney).
Featured image by: Omeiza Haruna
