Spoilers for The Punisher below
The Punisher is easily one of the best shows Marvel and Netflix have produced together. It has thematic depth that rivals Luke Cage or Jessica Jones, using Frank Castle's unstoppable hunger for violence to examine PTSD and the plight of veterans in this country. In that light, there's only one thing The Punisher really botched: Lewis Wilson.
Lewis was a vet and an attendee of Curtis's PTSD support group. Like many returning soldiers, he found it difficult to reintegrate into civilian life. Forces pulled him in multiple directions--Curtis was a positive influence, his father just wanted his son back, and O'Connor, another support group member, sought to radicalize him as a right wing protester.
As a civilian, that seems to me like a pretty realistic portrayal of what it must be like for veterans these days. The US is divided across political lines, and vets often go without the support they need to lead normal lives again.
Lewis's story started out as a nuanced portrayal of this struggle. He could have been a great foil for Frank, who returns to violence again and again, even when he has other options. Instead, The Punisher turned Lewis into a caricature of a violent right wing extremist. In other words, they made him a villain--and then they dropped his thread entirely.
By the end, Lewis was murdering innocent people, attempting to assassinate a politician over gun rights, and condemning a journalist for the crime of disagreeing with him--a far leap from the sympathetic, struggling character he began as.
How he got from A to B isn't exactly clear. In conversations with Curtis, Lewis made it clear he didn't know what to do with himself without a war--an internal fight Frank himself knows well, as he described in The Punisher's final scene. But when did Lewis become obsessed with extreme conservative ideals? When did gun laws become his motivating factor, to the point that he bombed New York City and targeted a liberal politician?
Was it when O'Connor attempted to radicalize him? That doesn't exactly track, considering Lewis became so disillusioned with O'Connor that he wound up murdering him. Why would he keep chasing O'Connor's ideals after that? Even killing himself--sad as this is--would have been more realistic than what occurred.
What purpose did Lewis's tragic story arc even serve? The Punisher had enough villains, and Lewis's ultimate unimportance to the story is evident in the fact he was barely mentioned again after blowing himself up. In the aftermath, Lewis's subplot seems more like a ham-fisted condemnation of the extreme right wing ideals that became his sole focus--the same ones dividing us today in real life.
If so, it all just serves to divide us further. Maybe it simply feels too soon in the wake of events like the recent Texas shooting--by a former member of the Air Force--that left 26 people dead. But showing a military vet suffering from PTSD get so easily radicalized that he goes from support group member to domestic terrorist in a few episodes of otherwise great TV is neither realistic nor helpful in the grand scheme of things.
Lewis's real problem was PTSD--and a system that he felt left him behind. It's The Punisher's one major failing that the show couldn't follow that thread to the end.
The Punisher is easily one of the best shows Marvel and Netflix have produced together. It has thematic depth that rivals Luke Cage or Jessica Jones, using Frank Castle's unstoppable hunger for violence to examine PTSD and the plight of veterans in this country. In that light, there's only one thing The Punisher really botched: Lewis Wilson.
Lewis was a vet and an attendee of Curtis's PTSD support group. Like many returning soldiers, he found it difficult to reintegrate into civilian life. Forces pulled him in multiple directions--Curtis was a positive influence, his father just wanted his son back, and O'Connor, another support group member, sought to radicalize him as a right wing protester.
As a civilian, that seems to me like a pretty realistic portrayal of what it must be like for veterans these days. The US is divided across political lines, and vets often go without the support they need to lead normal lives again.
Lewis's story started out as a nuanced portrayal of this struggle. He could have been a great foil for Frank, who returns to violence again and again, even when he has other options. Instead, The Punisher turned Lewis into a caricature of a violent right wing extremist. In other words, they made him a villain--and then they dropped his thread entirely.
By the end, Lewis was murdering innocent people, attempting to assassinate a politician over gun rights, and condemning a journalist for the crime of disagreeing with him--a far leap from the sympathetic, struggling character he began as.
How he got from A to B isn't exactly clear. In conversations with Curtis, Lewis made it clear he didn't know what to do with himself without a war--an internal fight Frank himself knows well, as he described in The Punisher's final scene. But when did Lewis become obsessed with extreme conservative ideals? When did gun laws become his motivating factor, to the point that he bombed New York City and targeted a liberal politician?
Was it when O'Connor attempted to radicalize him? That doesn't exactly track, considering Lewis became so disillusioned with O'Connor that he wound up murdering him. Why would he keep chasing O'Connor's ideals after that? Even killing himself--sad as this is--would have been more realistic than what occurred.
What purpose did Lewis's tragic story arc even serve? The Punisher had enough villains, and Lewis's ultimate unimportance to the story is evident in the fact he was barely mentioned again after blowing himself up. In the aftermath, Lewis's subplot seems more like a ham-fisted condemnation of the extreme right wing ideals that became his sole focus--the same ones dividing us today in real life.
If so, it all just serves to divide us further. Maybe it simply feels too soon in the wake of events like the recent Texas shooting--by a former member of the Air Force--that left 26 people dead. But showing a military vet suffering from PTSD get so easily radicalized that he goes from support group member to domestic terrorist in a few episodes of otherwise great TV is neither realistic nor helpful in the grand scheme of things.
Lewis's real problem was PTSD--and a system that he felt left him behind. It's The Punisher's one major failing that the show couldn't follow that thread to the end.
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