The true reason behind the Punisher's Gnucci family massacre all links back to his original Netflix show. Following his return to the MCU fold last year in Daredevil: Born Again, Jon Bernthal's Frank Castle is going solo for the first time under Marvel Studios in The Punisher: One Last Kill. The criminal-slayer previously led two seasons on Netflix, where he faced foes such as Jigsaw, John Pilgrim, Blacksmith, and Agent Orange, many of whom had ties to his military past.
The Punisher: One Last Kill is officially expanding the franchise's criminal underworld mythos with the introduction of the MCU's answer to Carmine Falcone, Judith Light's Ma Gnucci. Driven by revenge after Jon Bernthal's Punisher slaughtered her family, Ma Gnucci has it out for Frank Castle in One Last Kill, but their history actually goes back much further than the Disney+ special indicates.
How Frank Castle Connects To Ma Gnucci and Her Family In 'The Punisher: One Last Kill' & MCU Canon
In The Punisher: One Last Kill, Frank Castle's interest in the Gnucci crime family is portrayed as a relatively recent development. As the special begins, Castle has seemingly just finished crossing the Gnuccis off the board in Little Sicily, New York, triggering riots now that there is nobody left to keep the peace.
While a news broadcast in One Last Kill stated that the Punisher took on the Gnuccis after they were "linked to his family's deaths," his entanglement with the New York-based Italian crime family had already begun in his Netflix show.
Frank Castle's TV-MA Disney+ Special Presentation is believed to take place in the current MCU timeline, placing its events around 2027. However, Frank Castle's feud with the Gnucci Crime Family dates back to Netflix's The Punisher Season 1, which took place over a decade ago, around late 2016.
The Gnucci Crime Family was briefly introduced in The Punisher's series premiere through Tony Gnucci and several of his associates. While the Gnuccis were trying to track down a construction worker who was coerced into helping rob their poker game, Castle turned up to massacre them at a restaurant they owned.
Unfortunately, One Last Kill doesn't acknowledge Tony Gnucci or any of his associates that the Punisher took down over a decade ago. As such, there is no telling how exactly they are related to Ma Gnucci, nor if she knows that Castle's history of eliminating her family goes back further than she thinks.
Frank Castle Kills The Gnucci's In 'The Punisher: One Last Kill' Due To His Family's Tragic Deaths
A Spectrum News broadcaster states in One Last Kill that Castle became a suspect after "it was alleged that the Gnuccis were one of the last criminal organizations linked to his family's deaths." While that is the closest that the Disney+ special gives to an explanation for Frank Castle's Gnucci-slaying spree, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the context of the Punisher's MCU storyline.
The Punisher already established that the attack on the Castle family in Central Park was orchestrated by William Rawlins and Ray Schoonover, and carried out by the Kitchen Irish, Dogs of Hell, and the Mexican Cartel. Seeing Castle as a threat who could expose his illegal drug smuggling in Afghanistan, Rawlins planned to have his family killed while disguising it as a gang shootout gone wrong.
Unfortunately, the Disney+ special doesn't exactly give a clear answer to how the Gnuccis may have been connected to the Central Park shootout. Perhaps Rawlins simply employed their help in arranging the false-flag heroin deal between the other three New York-based criminal groups, something that Frank only discovered some time later, leading to his latest vendetta in One Last Kill.
One Last Kill's storyline of Castle taking on the Gnucci family is heavily based on Garth Ennis' Welcome Back, Frank comic run, in which he similarly slayed three of Ma Gnucci's sons, prompting her to put a bounty out on his head. In that storyline, Frank's motivations weren't personal; instead, he was simply eager to eliminate a famously untouchable crime family upon returning to New York after an absence.
Notably, the news report was clear that it had only been "alleged" that the Gnuccis were linked to the Castle family's demise, meaning that it may not be true. Perhaps Castle was instead simply up to his old tricks of taking down dangerous gangsters and mobsters in a more permanent fashion, driven even further to anger based on his personal experience of losing his loved ones at their hands.
How Frank Castle Killed Each Gnucci Family Member In 'The Punisher: One Last Kill'
First, Castle set his sights on Ma Gnucci's husband, Benny, shooting him straight through the head and into his pool. One Last Kill vaguely hinted that Benny was in a questionable "line of work" and having affairs with multiple younger women.
Second, the Punisher went for Gnucci's eldest son, Bobby, an NYPD police officer who supposedly solved many crimes that "others just never killed." However, he was butchered by Castle with a combat axe during a sexual encounter.
Third, the MCU anti-hero targeted Eddie, a family man with a wife and son who "lit up every room that he ever walked into." He was gunned down by Castle with an automatic weapon outside the Gnuccis' restaurant in front of his son.
Fourth and finally, Castle went after Carlo, whom Ma Gnucci declared her "prince" and refuted the allegations that he "touched a single one of those kids." While Carlo was supposedly never one to "get his hands dirty," that didn't save him from being ripped from a car by the Punisher and stomped to death.
While Ma Gnucci hoped to eliminate Castle by putting a massive bounty on his head, she was ultimately unsuccessful. Still, she survived One Last Kill after Frank prioritized saving a local family instead, meaning that Judith Light's MCU villain is still out there and could technically return in a future project.
