Punisher actor Ben Barnes loved playing the character of Jigsaw, but doesn’t expect to play him again in the Punisher’s return to the MCU.
Over the past few years, Marvel’s Netflix characters began to make the jump over to Disney+. This includes the likes of Daredevil and the Kingpin, who showed up in other titles.
This has raised the anticipation for characters like Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, or particularly the Punisher, to also return to the MCU.
However, one actor in The Punisher – Ben Barnes – doesn’t believe he will be returning to the show, as much as he wants to.
Ben Barnes “loved” playing Jigsaw in the Punisher
In an interview with ComicBook.com actor Ben Barnes – who plays Billy Russo/Jigsaw in the Netflix show – discussed whether or not his character would return in the future:
“I loved playing that character. I loved kind of like discovering through the course of the show that we did on Netflix, discovering this kind of like abused child inside of this psychopathic, you know, unhinged, scarred marine body, and I loved how unpredictable he was.
“In terms of, you never know if he’s gonna stab you or kiss you, or if he’s gonna like scream and rage and fire a machine gun at you, or if he’s going to sit in a corner and rock himself. You know, I, I just thought that I loved, I loved playing that character for that reason. It was so much fun.”
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Barnes stated that he greatly enjoyed working with the titular Punisher, Jon Bernthal, and “would absolutely” play Jigsaw again if he could. However, he wasn’t sure if that would ever be a possibility: “I don’t hold out a lot of hope for that.”
Barnes did describe how he would like to see Jigsaw return, if he could: “I would like to see a more gnarly version of him, even in the terms of the way he looks, maybe we could beat him up more again. Maybe we could smash his face into something again, but he’s very dead in the canon. I think we sort of did tie up that story in a quite satisfying way. So I don’t hold out a lot of hope.”
Will Jigsaw return to the MCU?
Chances are that no, Jigsaw will not return to The Punisher in the MCU.
This is mainly due to the fact that Jigsaw is dead; he was killed off in the second season of The Punisher, making it difficult to bring him back. However, with all the shenanigans going on with the Multiverse, bringing him back to life isn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility.
It’s also still unclear whether the Punisher himself – Frank Castle – will return to the MCU, though with Daredevil already bouncing back, that seems much more likely.
The Punisher is currently available to stream on Netflix.