As Secret Empire heads toward its conclusion, the heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe will have to cope with the consequences of their actions during the Hydra takeover of the United States. Ant-Man, Odinson, Deadpool and others must live with the knowledge that they worked with super-fascists, even if it turns out they did so reluctantly. There's one Marvel character, however, who jumped at the chance to join Hydra, apparently without any qualms or paranormal coercion: Frank Castle, aka The Punisher.

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Castle’s reveal as an agent of Hydra came as somewhat of a surprise, but the fact that he’s willingly working for the organization is even more shocking, although when you stop and consider it more closely, you can see his reasons for doing so. He's so often portrayed as a hero and power fantasy that it’s easy to forget how his brand of vigilante justice differs from the real heroes of the Marvel Universe, and how reprehensible his level of retribution truly is.

Castle doesn’t look up to many people, but on the short list of those he does admire is Steve Rogers. It’s a theme that’s frequently revisited when the two interact, most notably in Mark Millar and Steve McNiven’s Civil War and in the aftermath of Rogers' death in Matt Fraction and Ariel Olivetti’s Punisher: War Journal. When attacked by Rogers in the former series, Castle refused to fight back against the ultimate ideal of an American soldier. And following Rogers' death, The Punisher adopted his own take on the Sentinel of Liberty's uniform in honor of his hero, although his methods might not have been Cap-approved.

Frank Castle is a U.S. Marine, through and through, and if Captain America comes calling to say his country needs him, then Castle is exactly will answer that call. Rogers’ new approach to keeping America safe through control and fear could seem appealing to Castle in the sense that they’re on the same page, finally. If it means The Punisher gets free rein to do what he does best, well, that’s just an added bonus.

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Why The Punisher's Hydra Allegiance Does - And Does Not - Make Sense

However, while the idea of The Punisher working for Hydra doesn’t seem too far off, the idea of Frank Castle the man working for Hydra isn't fully plausible. To start with, the most obvious argument against Frank’s willing cooperation is Hydra’s complete destruction of Las Vegas and the massive loss of lives that resulted from the bombing. While he is a soldier and understand that people die in war, he also understands the concept of war crimes and should be struggling to square away the sheer enormity of Hydra’s actions versus his loyalty to Steve Rogers.

Furthermore, it was revealed in a recent issue of Secret Empire that Castle's dedication to Hydra comes partly from Captain America’s promise to use the Cosmic Cube to bring back the dead -- specifically, Castle's wife and children. The implication, of course, that the act of Las Vegas’ destruction doesn’t matter because the dead can be brought back to life once Rogers' government is fully entrenched in power. First, the fact that Las Vegas and its citizens can be brought back to life doesn’t change the fact that the act was carried out and was a crime at the highest level but second, we’ve seen Frank faced with the choice to bring his family back through extra-normal means before, and the lengths he's gone to in order to stop it from happening.

Way back during Marvel's Dark Reign event, The Punisher was given the opportunity to be reunited with his family by The Hood, a villain who had been plagued by Castle’s attacks on his operations for weeks. As the spell was completed and the coffin lids slowly opened, Castle forced the supervillain Firebrand to set fire to the caskets, watching as his wife and children burnt to death moments after their resurrection. The Punisher is someone with a very black and white outlook on the world, and people like him don’t get second chances and do-overs. His family is dead, and now he is The Punisher, full-stop. Even if they were to come back, he’d struggle to rise back up from the position he’s set himself into. In short, he knows they’re in a better place without him.

Of course, it's easy to see why a character like The Punisher might fit into an American right-wing fascist authoritarian regime, because so many real world American right-wing fascist authoritarian regimes idolize The Punisher. Most famously, the so-called "American Sniper" Chris Kyle was obsessed with The Punisher; in particular, the character's iconic skull logo, as Kyle went into detail on in his autobiography:

We all thought what the Punisher did was cool: He righted wrongs. He killed bad guys. He made wrongdoers fear him. That’s what we were all about. So we adapted his symbol  —  a skull — and made it our own, with some modifications. We spray-painted it on our Hummers and body armor, and our helmets and all our guns. And we spray-painted it on every building or wall we could. We wanted people to know, We’re here and we want to f— with you.

Kyle was a man who, by his own account, loved killing, and he’s hailed as a hero by many people. He’s also someone who bragged about picking off looters in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, and in the wake of his death has had a number of his claims debunked -- but he remains a representation of far-right militant fantasies.

However, Kyle is just an example of a larger problem in law enforcement and the military. There have been two separate instances, in Kentucky and New York, of police departments adding Punisher skulls to their cruisers. In both cases, the skull had been modified with a single blue stripe and the stars of the American flag, with the Catlettsburg, Kentucky, cruisers also bearing the “Blue Lives Matter” slogan.

The iconography of The Punisher is incredibly powerful. It represents a man who is willing to kill you if he believes you are guilty. The fact that institutions, includding the police and the military, have gleefully adopt his logo is, frankly, quite terrifying. So while Frank Castle's role in Secret Empire might seem out of character when viewed through the prism of his comic book continuity, perhaps it truly represents what The Punisher means in the real world, in 2017.