The Punisher: One Last Kill arrived on screens this week and immediately did something the character’s film and TV history had never managed: it led the pack. The 45-minute Disney Plus special, a standalone presentation that continues the Netflix Punisher series, opened with a 77% TomatoMeter score and an 87% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Jon Bernthal stars in the special and co-wrote the script with director Reinaldo Marcus Green, giving the project a direct creative stamp from the actor who has become the face of this version of Frank Castle. For a character whose screen history has often split critics and viewers, the numbers make One Last Kill the strongest-reviewed adaptation yet among the versions cited here.
The comparison is stark. The 1990 Punisher film sits at 24% on the TomatoMeter and 33% with audiences. The 2004 film improved to 30% and 63%, while 2008’s The Punisher: War Zone landed at 29% and 42%. Even the Netflix series, which gave the character his most sustained run on television, trails the new special in one measure or another: its first season scored 68% from critics and 88% from audiences, while the second season drew 61% and 70%.
That puts One Last Kill in a rare spot for a franchise that has spent decades trying to find the right balance between punishment, violence and character. The Rotten Tomatoes numbers do not just mark a solid debut; they place the special ahead of every other movie and TV adaptation of Frank Castle mentioned in the historical record here.
There is also a larger Marvel thread around Bernthal himself. He has been part of MCU conversation through Daredevil: Born Again season 1 and the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which gives this special extra weight beyond its runtime. But for now, the cleanest reading is the simplest one: the actor most closely identified with Frank Castle has returned in a shorter format, and this time the reception is the best the character has ever received on the scorecards that matter most to studios and fans alike.
The next question is whether that response turns One Last Kill into a one-off peak or the start of a longer life for Bernthal’s Punisher inside Marvel’s screen universe.
