Rosario Dawson ignites and then stamps out Punisher reboot rumors

Is Rosario Dawson a reliable source for Marvel Cinematic Universe news? She was a mainstay of Marvel’s Netflix shows as Claire Temple (a.k.a. Night Nurse), and she currently has the inside track at Disney+ starring in the Star Wars series Ahsoka. With those credentials, any fan would be forgiven for thinking Dawson had insider information.

Instead, the actor is apparently spreading misinformation about the future of the Marvel shows at Disney’s streaming service. Following the announcement that Charlie Cox would reprise his role as Matt Murdock for the new Daredevil series, Dawson claimed another character would be getting the same treatment. Speaking at Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo, she told the crowd (per Entertainment Weekly), “I found out yesterday that The Punisher was happening again, so I feel like it’s my second chance because it was the only one of the shows that I wasn’t in and I love Jon Bernthal. So let’s all make it happen collectively, guys.”

Daredevil: Born Again (as well as the general concept of the multiverse) has opened the door for more of the Netflix Marvel actors to reprise their roles. It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine Bernthal returning as the Punisher, either in his own show or somewhere else in the MCU. But just as fans got their hopes up, Dawson retracted her statement in a post to Twitter on Monday.

“I can’t be trusted…! Getting intel from fans during signings is iffy apparently,” she wrote. “My bad. I get excited. Confirmation is key when you’re told what you want to hear…”

Are we really meant to believe that Rosario Dawson was taken in by convention chatter like any old fool scrolling too quickly past a Film Updates parody account? With the sheer volume of Marvel news coming out on a regular basis, perhaps she really can’t keep up with the news from official sources. But given she’s an actual employee of the company, it strikes as odd she’d have taken some fan’s word as gospel.

Then there’s the conspiracy theory that has been banded around of late: are these actor slip-ups actually intentional on Marvel’s part to generate hype for certain projects? The layers upon layers of secrecy within spoiler culture are simply getting untenable with a franchise as massive as Marvel. In any case, we’ve come out of the situation with just as much Punisher as we started (read: no Punisher).