Why Disney+ Removed The Stan Lee Tribute From 'The Punisher'?
Stan Lee, a comic legend and the creator of Spider-Man, X-Men, Daredevil, passed away in November 2018. It makes sense that second season of Netflix' 'The Punisher' ended with a tribute to the maestro. So why Disney+ decided to remove it?
2018 marked a new era for Marvel original TV programming – Disney ended their collaboration with Netflix, home of the wildly popular 'Jessica Jones ', 'Daredevil ' and 'The Punisher', famous for the darker approach to Stan Lee's heroes and villains. Starting from March 1, 2022, all Marvel series were removed from Netflix and started streaming on Disney+. Fans were quick to notice than Lee's In Memoriam was missing form 'The Punisher' series finale.
However, the idea of deleting it from the show was already in place when the season was first aired back in 2019. And the reason behind this was an extensive violence, perpetuated by Bernthal's Punisher. The last episode concluded with the eponymous antihero killing dozens of criminals, and just before the credits rolled, fans saw a slide reading 'In Loving Memory of Stan Lee' – a little inappropriate, don't you think? Seems like Disney execs thought the same thing, deciding to eliminate all possible insults to the late creator.
But some fans considered the gesture itself to be an insult, blaming Disney for trying to erase the legacy of the great Stan Lee.