Disney+/MarvelIn the closing seconds of Daredevil: Born Again Episode 3, someone with a skull on their vest murders White Tiger in cold blood – but it can’t be Frank Castle, aka The Punisher.
The cards were stacked against Hector Alaya from the start. He tried to defend a man getting beat up on a subway platform, and in the scuffle, someone fell in front of a train… and he was a police officer.
Not only is he an alleged cop killer, but he’s innocent and destined to be a victim of a police coverup. There’s also the small matter of his vigilantism: he moonlights as White Tiger, making his imprisonment very desirable to Wilson Fisk, New York’s newest mayor – or should I say Kingpin?
And yet, thanks to Matt Murdock, the jury finds him not guilty… and that night, as he walks the streets as White Tiger, he’s shot and killed. It’s unclear who was responsible, but it’s not The Punisher.
Who killed White Tiger?
Disney+White Tiger may have been murdered by someone in a skull vest, but doesn’t mean it was The Punisher. After all, why would Frank Castle murder a fellow vigilante and possibly even support Wilson Fisk?
There’s one obvious answer: a corrupt cop murdered Hector under Fisk’s orders, or perhaps even off their own back as an act of revenge for Officer Shanahan’s death.
If you think about it for one second, it’s the only answer that makes sense (it certainly isn’t Muse – he’s not been introduced in the show yet, but he has no reason to get involved).
Before Hector’s death, Fisk is angry about his acquittal. “Courts fail, juries get it wrong… now, a masked vigilante, a murderer is allowed to roam the streets, and a veteran of the NYPD lies dead,” he tells BB Urich.
“These vigilantes are not heroes… I ran on a promise, and the acquittal of Hector Alaya demands that I keep it,” he also says. That is a not-so-veiled threat, so it certainly seems like Fisk had a hand in his murder.
In Episode 2, BB told Fisk if he lost the cops, he’d “lose the city.” What better way to appeal to a wavering police force than enabling their vengeance?
Why it wasn’t The Punisher
MarvelCast your mind back to Matt and Frank’s first conversation in Daredevil Season 2. “For Christ’s sake, that’s what you think? I’m just some crazy asshole going around unloading on whoever I want to?” Frank said.
“Look around, Red. This city, it stinks. It’s a sewer. It stinks and it smells like shit and I can’t get the stink out of my nose. I think that this world, it needs men who are willing to make the hard call… you hit’em and they get back up. I hit’em and they stay down! It’s permanent. I make sure that they don’t make it out on the street again. I take pride in that.”
In what world did White Tiger deserve Frank’s punishment? He didn’t do anything wrong.
That’s not to say he’s never allied himself with Fisk. In Season 2, Fisk gave Castle a chance to kill the person responsible for his family’s deaths – and then he betrayed him, and Castle vowed to kill him when he gets the chance.
Unless Born Again takes an extremely different direction with the character, don’t expect to see The Punisher supporting cops.
MarvelIn Issue #13 of The Punisher (2018-19), Frank is confronted by two cops on the street. They’re fans, and just like in Born Again, they sport his logo. “We believe in you,” they tell him.
“I’ll say this once. We’re not the same. You took an oath to uphold the law. You help people. I gave all that up a long time ago. You don’t do what I do. Nobody does. You boys need a role model? His name is Captain America, and he’d be happy to have you.”
Also, the character’s creators reject any affiliation with the police. “Any ‘cop’ who wears a Punisher logo in his official capacity is identifying law enforcement with an outlaw,” Gerry Conway tweeted in 2019.
“These ‘cops’ are a disgrace to serious police officers everywhere. They show an imbecilic level of irresponsibility and should be fired immediately.”
In 2020, Conway launched an initiative called Skulls for Justice. “For too long, symbols associated with a character I co-created have been co-opted by forces of oppression and to intimidate Black Americans,” he explained.
“This character and symbol was never intended as a symbol of oppression. This is a symbol of a systematic failure of equal justice. It’s time to claim this symbol for the cause of equal justice and Black Lives Matter.”
Make sure you know when the next episode drops with our Daredevil: Born Again release schedule, find out more about when Born Again takes place in the MCU timeline, and check out our ranking of every Marvel TV show. Also, if you want to know what to watch before Born Again, we’ve got you covered – and if you want to read deeper, discover Daredevil’s darkest story that’s too weird for the MCU.
