My Review of "The Punisher: Season 2"

The Punisher: Season 2 came out exclusively on Netflix in 2019. I was a huge fan of the first season back in 2017. It took them 2 years to come out with the second season. Unfortunately with the Disney acquisition of the Marvel licenses there won't be any more Netflix Marvel shows. This will have to be the final season.

The season starts off where the last season ended off. Fortunate for me the first season was so memorable that I remembered a lot of what had happened. Basically the main character, Frank Castle had his family killed right in front of him. Enraged he swore to avenge the deaths of his family members. Unbeknown to Frank it was actually some ex military colleagues of his that had committed the crime. Full of vengeance he was able to take down this ex-military group and get the revenge that he wished.

At the beginning of this season we see Frank finally at peace with everything. It's been a while and he's finally starting a brand new life. He becomes attracted to a local bartender and starts to really enjoy his new beginnings. Of course everything can't be so rosy or else we wouldn't have a full season.

At the bar there's a young girl, Rachel, that gets into some sort of altercation. Frank being Frank, gets himself involved so that he can save the girl. Unfortunately for Frank, getting involved in Rachel's affairs had dire consequences. His new love interest dies in the barfight that he instigates and he finds out that Rachel is in deeper trouble than he thought.

This basically puts Rachel and Frank on the run from a mysterious group. Even worse Rachel is uncooperative with Frank and refuses to give him any details as to why they're chasing after her.

Meanwhile the leader of the ex-military group, Russo, that Frank took down in the first season miraculously lives but he's all scarred up. He's put into a mental ward where he continues to go down a darker path of lunacy. Somehow Russo and his psychological therapist form some sort of relationship. This relationship for some reason reminds me of the Joker and Harley Quinn. The parallels are very obvious.

The whole season is pretty much about two things. The major storyline revolves around Rachel and the secrets that she has uncovered. There's a mysterious man chasing her down. It must be very important information if they put so many people on the line to nab her. The whole thing is rather absurd but I went with it because it's a TV series. I kept on thinking it was going to get better and it does in some regards.

The second major storyline is based on Russo. He's trying to pick up the pieces of his past and make sense of his life. When he finds out what had happened to him he's going to exact revenge. This storyline kind of goes all over the place and it was kind of not even necessary to keep the season going. I kind of lost interest in this storyline as it unfolded. At certain moments I was wondering if this storyline was going anywhere as they continued to drag it on with his relationship with his psychologist.

There are glimpses of the fun in this season it would bring my hopes up as it would show us the bad-ass Frank Castle in the forefront. These were always very short moments as they would always diffuse into some situation where he's worst off than he was before. Each episode almost seemed like a formula after a while. At times I even got angry with the show and didn't want to continue watching it.

Some of the characters were just so bull headed that it actually felt like talking to a bull headed person. That could be a display of great performances by the actors but it was so frustrating that I didn't want to watch the show anymore. Everyone in the show is so self righteous and you knew no one was going to be any good relationships with any of the characters. It wasn't a great experience.

Also there's a lot of moments where I really had to hold back my sense of logic while watching this show. Like when you see Frank or Russo get utterly destroyed and they would live to see the next day as if it was just a hard days work at the gym the night before. None of the characters have super powers yet they all seem to have some sort of cartoon gene to revive themselves from eminent death.

To add to the frustration this show has some horrible audio issues. Everyone is always whispering. It's to the point I had to put subtitles on so that I could understand what's going on. Then when there's some sort of action the volume goes to 11. There's loud crashes and screaming everywhere. I know why they did this but really it isn't warranted in a TV show. Maybe in the theatres where it's kind of expected but as a TV show it's really uncomfortable to sit through this.

Overall, I went into this season hoping for the best and what I got was what I felt was mediocre. The way the set up the audio and all of the unlikable characters really made me change my mind about the series. Half way through the season I wanted to shut it off. I only finished it because I was so far into it already. I unfortunately have to give this season a 5 out of 10. In this case I'm not too sad that they ended the series on Netflix. I don't know if I could handle another season like this.