Rejoice, Marvel fans because one of the franchise’s most fan-favorite and yet oddly underrated leading actors has finally won their first Emmy award. 2024’s Creative Emmys turned out to be a big night for The Bear, as the FX show brought home seven statuettes — with even more expected to follow from next week’s Primetime Emmys.
One of those was the award for Best Guest Actor in a Drama Series, which deservedly went to Jon Bernthal for his role in the second season episode “Fishes.” This, if you can believe it, marks the actor’s first ever Emmy win. The Marvel and Bear fandoms are finding themselves increasingly intertwined of late, what with Ebon Moss-Bachrach playing the Thing in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and now everyone is in agreement that Bernthal well and truly earned this amazing achievement.
In fact, most are convinced he should’ve already ticked it off his bucket list years ago.
And we all know which role he should have won an Emmy for. Bernthal is, of course, most known to Marvel lovers as Frank Castle in both Netflix’s Daredevil and The Punisher series. There have been four on-screen Punishers over the decades, but 99% of fans would likely agree Bernthal is the best thanks to his nuanced and multi-layered take on the anti-hero character.
His portrayal really should’ve earned him some real awards recognition, but the show’s comic book trappings likely caused his performance to be overlooked. Thankfully, since the show was cancelled in 2018, things have changed a little on that front — see Black Panther‘s Best Picture Oscar nomination and WandaVision‘s Emmy domination earlier this decade — and Bernthal’s win for The Bear helps ease the injustice.
I mean, the guy gave us an immortal meme template that’s still going strong eight years later. If that’s not proof of Emmy-winning material I don’t know what is.
Some even think Bernthal should’ve won an Emmy for his role as Shane on The Walking Dead, back during the zombie drama’s early creative peak, and you know what maybe they’re right.
Seeing as this Emmy win seems to have woken up the slumbering Punisher collective, the good news is that Bernthal is about to make his long-awaited return to the MCU in 2025’s Daredevil: Born Again. It’s currently unclear exactly how hefty a role he’ll have in the Disney Plus revival, but given that he featured in the (unreleased) Comic-Con trailer and attended D23 with the cast the odds are high that he’ll have a significant presence.
It’s still too early to say whether Born Again will live up to all the hype and be the continuation of Netflix’s Defenders Saga we deserve, but thanks to WandaVision and now his Bear success, it’s not entirely impossible for Bernthal to add another Emmy nomination to his resume in a couple of years’ time. One Emmy, two Emmys, penny and dime.
Published: Sep 9, 2024 09:12 am