The Punisher took a step back from Frank Castle's crusade for episode 3 to focus on Frank and Micro as well as delving into Frank's past.
Picking up right where the previous episode left off, we find Frank Castle in David "Micro" Lieberman's hideout, with Lieberman strapped naked to a chair. With Frank not saying a word, Micro is left filling in the blanks that Frank is paranoid that Micro has some kind of backup that will soon arrive. To prevent this, Frank decides it's time for some torture, opting out of extreme brutality and instead using his knife for eating as well as running it against Micro. After a forceful slap, Frank tells Micro that the interesting thing about torture is how, despite initial pain, the human brain comes to seek comfort in a pattern. Routine is necessary to the mind, Frank says, a sort of false sense of security, as the victim's awareness of time dissolves and they resign themselves to their fate. Micro tells Frank how they are after the same people, as those responsible for the murder of Frank's family also "killed" Micro. Micro, a former NSA agent, found himself in a dilemma when he got footage of Frank's former Afghanistan team torturing and killing an innocent cop. Deciding he should do what's right, Micro turned whistleblower, and the next day noticed Carson Wolf and other officers approaching his car with guns and body armor. Though he tried to run away, Micro found himself surrounded by the corrupt officers, who fired a shot and began shouting at him to put his nonexistent weapon down. Standing on a ledge and distracted by his wife's arrival, Micro was shot and fell over the ledge, leading to his ghost life. With Frank having killed Carson Wolf in the second episode, we also cut occasionally to Dinah Madani, who has taken Wolf's place. As Madani tries to solve Wolf's murder, she also has to adjust to her new position and figure out who to let in and when. We also continue to get scenes of Curtis, Frank's fellow veteran, this episode with another former teammate from Afghanistan, Billy Russo. These scenes serve as a good way to continue diving into the psycho of battered army vets, with one young man describing how a man's head exploded when he shot it. Though he doesn't regret what he did, the man is angry about untrue propaganda he heard reporters say, changing a friendly fire incident into an ambush from the enemy. Though Curtis tries to keep things calm and talk about the sacrifices his friends had made, leading to him finding his new insurance salesman life, another veteran tells the young man that the emotional stuff is crap and he should look into the NRA. Along with the show handling the subject well, Curtis walks a fine line while interacting with Russo, as he must be careful to not say anything revealing Frank. Back with Frank and Micro, the torture takes an interesting turn, as Micro turns the tables and begins analyzing Frank. Micro begins bringing up the video he leaked, asking Frank how many times the innocent cop was beaten for no reason. This leads to flashbacks to Frank's time serving under Ray Schoonover, revealed in Daredevil as the drug dealer "The Blacksmith," who had Frank's family killed. While the main focus of the flashbacks shows the group's ignorance in what they were doing and how they reacted to their duties, we also see a story told back in Daredevil. Schoonover, while testifying on Frank's behalf, mentioned a mission the squad went on thinking they had found a powerful enemy, that was revealed to be a trap. In the flashback, we see that Frank was against the plan, their enemies' awareness of the group and the sudden dangerous whereabouts of this enemy being revealed leading him to think it was a trap, as he would do the same thing. Despite Frank's doubts and Russo backing him up, Schoonover went ahead with the plan, leading to many deaths from their squad and the loss of one of his hands. Frank then took control of the situation and singlehandedly cleared a landing pad for their support, saving the rest of the group. The squad is shell shocked afterward, but An alarm occasionally goes off which Micro says requires a code and retinal scan from him, otherwise his bunker will explode. Though the squad is shell shocked after, Agent Orange, who pushed Schoonover into the plan, only asked about if they succeeded, earning him a punch from Frank. As we learn about Frank's past, we see more of the moral gray area he works in and how his past haunts him. After the Afghan officer was tortured, he pleaded for his life, telling Frank he had a family, only to receive a bullet to the head. Frank and a squad mate later buried him, and as commanded, Frank removed the bullet from his head, thereby removing evidence of what happened. Frank's issues with his past lead to an interesting situation as we follow him, as there is the question of if we should support him just because of his family's death when he was so cold-blooded in the past. If the episodes so far are a good indication of the future, then further down the line things will only get better.
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