Does Daredevil Show up in ‘The Punisher’ Season 2?

Spoilers for the second season of The Punisher past this point, obviously.

When Marvel’s Daredevil was abruptly canceled by Netflix, it came with a promise: “the Daredevil character will live on in future projects for Marvel.” Speculation ran high that Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) and company would pop up on the Disney+ streaming service, or in the next Avengers movie, or maybe at my birthday party??? But the most likely place for DD to rear his horn-head would be one of the few remaining Marvel/Netflix shows. So does Daredevil show up in The Punisher Season 2?

No, man. He doesn’t. In fact, the large majority of the second season of Netflix’s vigilante drama (I refuse to call it a “crime thriller,” sorry press releases) is completely removed from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, preferring to stay safely in the realm of cops and criminals — to the point that Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) only rarely dons his signature skull vest in order to murderize people.

That’s not to say it’s completely devoid of references to the other shows.

Though Daredevil doesn’t show up, his lawyer alter-ego Matt Murdock gets name-dropped when another Marvel/Netflix staple shows up. That would be Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), who pops up towards the end of the season once Frank is captured by the police and handcuffed to a hospital bed. Karen and Frank have a long history: she was his confidant when the character was first introduced in Season 2 of Daredevil; and briefly appeared in the first season of The Punisher in a key role.

Once again, she turns up at an important moment in Castle’s life. Once there, he asks her whether Matt knows she’s there, and when she doesn’t answer he says, “yeah, that’s what I thought,” urging her to go back to Nelson, Murdock and Page, avocados at law, because they’re “good.”

A bigger feature of the season is Detective Brett Mahoney (Royce Johnson), who started as a beat cop on Daredevil and worked his way up through cameos on Jessica Jones and the first season of The Punisher. He’s a recurring player this season, hunting Frank through the streets of New York before ultimately, begrudgingly letting him operate with semi-impunity.

The last MCU player who shows up is Turk Barrett (Rob Morgan), the former crook who always ends up worse than he started thanks to the heroes and anti-heroes of Marvel’s Netflix shows. He’s actually the only character that’s consistently been on every Marvel/Netflix show, and here he gets thrown into the middle of a deadly conflict involving The Punisher and a Russian gang.

So technically one could argue that yes, the Daredevil character does live on in The Punisher Season 2, thanks to a name-drop and several characters that spun out of his show. He also, of course, lives on in our hearts.

But that still doesn’t answer the main question: will he show up at my birthday party? Stay tuned.

Stream The Punisher on Netflix