Marvel Studios Just Recast 2 Major MCU Netflix Actors

Marvel Studios has recast two major characters from its Netflix era for The Punisher: One Last Kill. The Disney+ special brings back Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle, the brutal vigilante he first played in 2016, and pulls familiar faces like Deborah Ann Woll's Karen Page and Jason R. Moore's Curtis Hoyle back into the fold. Not every returning role belongs to a returning actor, though. Two characters tied directly to Frank's past now have different performers behind them, and both recastings reach back to the Netflix run that started it all.

One Last Kill recasts Lisa Castle and Frank Castle Jr., Frank's late daughter and son. Adeline Bernthal now plays Lisa, taking over from Nicolette Pierini, who appeared as the character in Netflix's The Punisher. Eduardo Campirano steps into the role of Frank Jr., a part Aidan Pierce Brennan held in the same series. Both children died years before the events of the special, so they show up through flashbacks and the hallucinations that haunt Frank. This casting change is major because these two are the emotional core of every Punisher story Marvel has told, and One Last Kill effectively uses them to tell audiences where Frank's at emotionally, why he's so broken and lost.

Adeline Bernthal is Perfect as Lisa Castle 

Addie Bernthal is Jon Bernthal's real daughter, which means the actor playing Frank Castle shares the screen with his actual child in the role of Frank's lost daughter. The two have worked together before, with Addie appearing alongside her father in the 2021 thriller Small Engine Repair.

Nicolette Pierini originated Lisa in four episodes of Netflix's The Punisher in 2017. Nearly a decade has passed since that run, and Pierini, a child actress at the time, has long since aged out of the part. Rather than reach for archival footage or digital trickery, Marvel handed the role to someone new. Lisa's death, alongside the rest of Frank's family, is the wound that drives the entire character, so her presence in One Last Kill is far from a background detail.

In the special, Frank visits the graves of his wife and children and slips into violent visions of them as he spirals. Lisa turns up in those memories and hallucinations, the same way earlier Punisher projects used her to blur the line between what Frank remembers and what his guilt conjures. Casting Bernthal's own daughter makes those scenes where Frank screams in pain when he realizes the daughter he thought he saw was a figment of his imagination, even more touching.

Recasting Frank Jr. Was Inevitable  

Frank Jr. is the younger of Frank and Maria Castle's two children, and like his sister Lisa, he died in the attack that destroyed the family. He returns in One Last Kill through flashback sequences that fill in the life Frank lost.

The original Frank Jr. was Aidan Pierce Brennan, who appeared in four episodes of the Netflix series in 2017. Brennan was a young child during that shoot and is now an adult, so the same age problem that forced the Lisa recasting applies here. Marvel chose to replace the actor with Campirano, and it's a perfectly reasonable decision given the circumstances.

Frank Jr. hasn’t really enjoyed the same screen time as Lisa, but his memory haunts Frank all the same. Earlier portrayals leaned on a line about the boy wanting to protect his mother and sister while his Marine father was deployed, the kind of detail that intensifies Frank's grief. One Last Kill keeps the character in that role, a piece of the family Frank cannot stop reliving. 

Marvel Studios Has Made Some Fascinating Recasting Choices Lately

Recasting is not new territory for the MCU, and the Netflix characters have taken more of it than most. Daredevil: Born Again has a few examples. When Marvel Studios first developed that series, it planned to keep only Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio from the original cast and bring in fresh actors everywhere else. 

Sandrine Holt was hired to replace Ayelet Zurer as Vanessa Fisk, Kingpin's wife. A creative overhaul scrapped that plan, the original writers and directors left, and Zurer was brought back to reprise the role she had played on Netflix. The studio also quietly recast Kingpin's parents, Bill and Marlene Fisk, ahead of Born Again, though that change passed with little notice since the roles amount to voices in a brief flashback.

The big-screen side of the franchise has seen its own headline swaps. Harrison Ford took over Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross in Captain America: Brave New World, stepping into a part William Hurt had played across five films from 2008's The Incredible Hulk onward. Hurt died in 2022, and Marvel was already planning to turn Ross into the Red Hulk, a far bigger role than his previous appearances as Ross. The recast even got a wink in the film itself, with Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson telling Ross he looks different and Ross blaming a lost mustache.

This nod to the audience is a move Marvel has pulled before with another major recast. It dates back to Iron Man 2, when Don Cheadle replaced Terrence Howard as James "Rhodey" Rhodes and walked on with a line about how it's him now, and everyone should deal with it. Cheadle has held the role ever since. He's appeared in the Avengers films and is set to headline his own Armor Wars project, which has stalled. The Hulk went through a similar early change, with Mark Ruffalo taking over Bruce Banner from Edward Norton ahead of 2012's The Avengers and becoming one of the most familiar faces in the entire universe.