WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Marvel's The Punisher, available now on Netflix.

It's only fitting that Frank Castle's crusade should presumably end where it began, on a carousel in Manhattan's Central Park. Given how often Marvel's The Punisher flashed back to that incongruous setting of joy and horror throughout its first season, there was really no other place for the showdown between Castle (Jon Bernthal) and his best friend turned greatest enemy Billy Russo (Ben Barnes).

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With CIA veteran William Rawlins (Paul Schulze), the architect of the conspiracy that resulted in the deaths of Castle's wife and kids, now dead at The Punisher's hands and Barnes left ruined and pursued by authorities, he's determined to settle a few scores. After all, he has little to lose -- or so it would seem.

Following a tense standoff with Castle, with their mutual friend Curtis Hoyle (Jason R. Moore) caught in the middle, Russo calls for a midnight meeting, "by your painted ponies," to bring their bloody conflict to an end. "How do you feel about that?" he asks. "Finish this where it all started." Although Russo (or "Uncle Billy," as Castle's children called him) didn't have a hand in the murders of Maria and the two kids, he clearly chooses the location for its poetry, and the trauma.

The showdown on the moving carousel, witnessed by a pair of concession-stand employees taken hostage and wounded by Russo, owes much to the climax of Alfred Hitchcock's 1951 thriller Strangers on a Train, in which the protagonist and antagonist finally confront each other on a merry-go-round, not-so-coincidentally near the scene of the crime that sets the plot in motion. Although the firefight between Castle and Russo begins nearby, it quickly moves onto the carousel where, like in Hitchcock's classic, the scene becomes more and more manic, as gunfire, the cries of the hostages, the ride's moving parts and the increasingly disturbing carnival music whirl together.

The mirrored scenic panels at the carousel's center are a bit like Chekhov's gun: Once they appear on screen, we just know they'll come into play in the fight, both because of Russo's vanity and because of his comic book origin, which is far different from that detailed on the Netflix drama. In the comics, he's a hit man known for his good looks who's hired by the mob to kill anyone who might know about the botched gangland execution that resulted in the deaths of Castle's family. He succeeds in killing everyone but Castle, who knocks Russo through a glass pane, leaving his face horribly disfigured. He adopts the nickname Jigsaw, and continues as The Punisher's archenemy.

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Likewise on Marvel's The Punisher, Russo is little match for even a severely injured Castle, who stabs him in the stomach with a shard of mirror before scraping his face down the glass, leaving him ... well, horribly disfigured. Horrified at his reflection, Russo begs to be killed, but Castle decides he'd rather leave his old friend alive. "I'm not gonna let you die today," he says as he repeatedly smashes Russo's head into the mirror. "Dying's easy. You're gonna learn about pain, you're gonna learn about loss."

As Russo seemingly only cared about his appearance, and money, it's probably the worst punishment Castle could dole out. When we last see him, Russo in a hospital, his face hidden beneath bandages, and quite possibly brain dead.

'Enjoy Your Freedom'

Jason R. Moore as Curtis Hoyle and Daniel Webber as Lewis Walcott on The Punisher

Castle could've escaped the police, but he chose to instead wait at the carousel to help U.S. Homeland Security Agent Dinah Madani (Amber Rose Revah), who was shot by Russo, and the two injured hostages. He's taken into custody but "rewarded" three days later by soon-to-be CIA director Marion James (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) and Homeland Security official Rafael Hernandez (Tony Plana), who aren't interested in seeing the details of an illegal CIA operation in Afghanistan and the subsequent coverup play out in the media.

So, in James' words, they "redirected the narrative," and have named troubled young veteran Lewis Walcott, who'd planted bombs and tried to kill a senator and Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) and Russo as the only suspects behind the recent mayhem. Although The Punisher is known to be alive and at large, due to dash cam video from a police car, they removed Castle's DNA and fingerprints from the criminal justice system, and replaced them with those of a dead man. Frank Castle is once more Pete Castiglione, the name he adopted when he went underground after killing the last of the Kitchen Irish, the Mexican Cartel and the Dogs of Hell, the three gangs involved in the shootout at Central Park. (In the comics, The Punisher's real name was Castiglione; he changed it to Castle so he could sign up for a third tour in Vietnam.)

"Enjoy your freedom, Mr. Castle," James says. "Although I do wonder what freedom means to a man like you."

Happily Ever After?

Jaime Ray Newman as Sarah Lieberman

The final scenes callbacks to earlier in the season, beginning with a Thanksgiving-style dinner at the Liebermans, with Sarah and the two kids finally reunited with David (aka Micro, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach) after a year of believing him dead. Castle had talked with Micro about Thanksgiving traditions, and even dreamed about the Castles and Liebermans coming together for dinner, an idyllic scene that quickly twisted into a nightmare of blood.

Castle's relationship with Sarah is complicated, to say the least. A shared understanding of loss helped to form a quick bond between the two, which took an uncomfortable turn when Sarah, after too much wine, kissed him. But more than that, Castle saw in the Liebermans everything he lost, and what he'll never be able to have again. To that end, it's certainly understandable why Frank, or Pete, couldn't sit down for a family meal.

The closing moments finally see Castle take his friend Curtis Hoyle up on his offer to join the veterans support group. Hoyle was one of the few people who knew The Punisher had survived the explosion in the second season of Daredevil, and Castle would linger outside group meetings, waiting for them to break up, to talk with his friend and to borrow books. But with Hoyle's assurances that he'll be safe at the meeting -- "we keep each other's secrets" -- Castle allows himself to show vulnerability.

"For the first time for as long as I can remember," he confesses, "I don't have a war to fight, and I guess -- if I'm going to be honest -- I'm scared."

Available now on Netflix, The Punisher stars Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle, Ben Barnes as Billy Russo, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Micro, Amber Rose Revah as Dinah Madani, Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Page, Daniel Webber as Lewis Walcott, Shohreh Aghdashloo as Farah Madani, and Paul Schulze as Rawlins.