As the world patiently awaits the news of whether or not The Punisher will get a Season 2 from Netflix, showrunner Steve Lightfoot shared his thoughts on a pair of notable villains he'd like to use in the show's future. While Lightfoot stresses that he hasn't given Season 2 too much thought this early on, he totally name-dropped the villainous Barracuda and fellow vigilante Kathryn O'Brien as two preferred possibilities. In his words:
I haven't even thought about Season 2...but one of the villains I love is Barracuda. I think he's great fun. I also really like O'Brien. I thought she was always really cool. Certainly those two jump out at me initially, but there are so many great characters there. It's a very fun sandbox to play in.
As most fans of The Punisher will attest to, Steve Lightfoot offered up two very interesting characters that he'd be interested in adapting to live-action for a potential Season 2 of the Netflix drama, as told to THR. Season 1 took the slow-burn route in directly laying out its villains, so it would be an exciting prospect to see how Lightfoot would spin a realistic arc out of Barracuda, whose ruthless behavior almost matches that of Frank Castle. Raised poorly from a very young age, Barracuda finds his way into special forces training after being recruited out of juvie. Already considered a bad egg going in, Barracuda doesn't get any less ruthless past that stage and his large size combined with his Green Beret training to make him a walking tank of a murder machine once he left the military. Anyone who watched Season 1 knows that the military angle is an easy connection for this universe.
Kathryn O'Brien, meanwhile, shares a similar dynamic with Frank Castle that's not unlike that of Bruce Wayne and Talia Al Ghul. A CIA agent originally enlisted to capture Castle, O'Brien went through legal troubles before eventually falling in love with the hero. At one point, she even saved him from her ex-husband, Bill Rawlins. O'Brien and Rawlins didn't have a good marriage -- he framed her for a crime and left her for dead in a war zone -- so it's completely understandable she wasn't introduced alongside Paul Schulze's Rawlins in Season 1, even if she does happen to show up going forward. It wouldn't have been very smart to immediately try and set Frank up with another woman when he's getting to the bottom of his family's deaths in Season 1.
Coincidentally enough, both O'Brien and Barracuda are loosely tied into the same storyline in The Punisher comic books, as both were created by comic mastermind Garth Ennis. O'Brien ends up becoming pregnant from a sexual encounter with Frank, unbeknownst to him, and it's only after her death that the child is given to her sister. Barracuda discovers the child is Frank's and kidnaps it, with the intention of killing her in front of a captured Frank, who is made aware the child is his and eventually saves her, taking Barracuda down in the most Punisher way possible. Which would have been excessive, except Barracuda once survived a point blank shotgun blast in shark-infested waters, so suffice to say, he's a tough guy to take down.
The Punisher does not have a Season 2 renewal this time, but Season 1 is currently available for streaming on Netflix, and it has won over a lot of fans at this point. Those waiting on news of a renewal can kill time by visiting CinemaBlend's fall premiere guide and our 2017 Netflix schedule, both of which are chock full of television shows that warrant some attention. For a look ahead at what's coming in 2018, be sure to check out our midseason premiere guide. For a list of shows that were cancelled in 2017, look no further than our cancellation guide which is practically a hall of fame of disappointing television.
