The Hulu original Marvel’s Hit-Monkey includes a meaningful Punisher easter egg in episode 4. Both Hit-Monkey and The Punisher, which ran for two seasons starting in 2017, are products of Marvel Television, which no longer exists, and as such are not officially part of the MCU. In both cases, and particularly for Hit-Monkey, this might be for the better, as the show contains a degree of violence and gore that would be thoroughly jarring against some of the MCU’s staple movies and shows.
Hit-Monkey follows the story of Bryce and Hit-Monkey, the ghost of an American hitman and the Japanese macaque he’s haunting, as they tear their way through Tokyo’s criminal underworld seeking revenge for the deaths of both Bryce and Hit-Monkey’s entire family. It’s a fairly wild premise, based on the Daniel Wray comic of the same name, and Hulu’s animated series holds nothing back. Whether it’s an evil old woman being cut in half by a table saw or two Yakuza casino owners getting kebabed through the brain on a katana, Hit-Monkey wreaks bloody havoc wherever he goes, with Bryce egging him on and offering plenty of wise-cracks to boot.
But Hit-Monkey also references another brutal antihero. When the pair stop by Akiko’s house in episode 4, she’s in the middle of reading a Punisher comic and says approvingly to herself, “Ooh, see that’s revenge” while she reads. Akiko herself is somewhat of a hot-headed revenge-monger, but the Punisher easter egg implicates Hit-Monkey, too. Not only is the reference a fun nod to another MCU-outcast, but it also meaningfully underscores some of Hit-Monkey’s central moral quandaries.
The Punisher and Hit-Monkey are surprisingly similar figures despite the fact that one is human and one is a Japanese snow monkey. Punisher is a tortured vigilante who fights corruption and crime by whatever means necessary, often resorting to dark and violent acts. The Hit-Monkey episode Punisher gets referenced in sees Hit-Monkey and Bryce arguing over just such a concept, with Hit-Monkey deciding he’ll live by a code to only kill killers. This is loosely similar to Punisher’s dubious moral standard, which helps explain why Hit-Monkey references him. At the same time, Bryce warns Hit-Monkey that he’ll need to be willing to break his code at times if he wants to survive. By referencing Punisher, a more experienced and perhaps less scrupulous antihero, the show could be indicating that Hit-Monkey’s high road is doomed to take a dark turn.
Neither Hit-Monkey nor The Punisher fits in the MCU because of their extreme violence, but between the two, Hit-Monkey definitely goes further with its creative and gratuitous animated gore. To this end, the Punisher reference also serves as a somewhat ironic acknowledgment of this fact. While Akiko stands inside reading about a hardened, brutal vigilante who certainly earned his TV-MA rating, right outside is a softhearted macaque who’s done just as bad, if not worse. Additionally, Hit-Monkey renders its TV-MA violence with a heavy dose of humor, something the brooding and conflicted Punisher does not. Paradoxically, Hit-Monkey‘s lightheartedness makes it even darker. Thus, Marvel’s Hit-Monkey‘s Punisher easter egg serves not only to foreshadow the protagonist’s savage journey, but also to further imbue it with tongue-in-cheek humor.
