Nobody Is More Upset About the Punisher Cancellation Than Eminem Is

No one is more upset about Netflix's cancellation of Marvel's The Punisher than Eminem is. No one.

Sure, he probably should've seen it coming. The streaming service had been steadily axing all of its MCU series since last October, and the rise of Disney+ all but ensured that The Punisher's second season would be its last. Even the showrunner and actors saw it coming long before the official announcement, which earned little more than a groan from anyone paying attention. But that didn't stop Marshall Mathers from having a very polite Twitter meltdown about it on Wednesday.

The rapper took Netflix to task over the decision to cancel the show, writing that the streaming service was "blowing it."

His tweet on its own is enough to earn some chuckles, considering how much contempt can be read into his use of polite lingo like "dear" and "sincerely" and how deadly serious he is about it all with those all-caps and direct @-ing techniques. For those who are surprised to see Em stanning so hard about The Punisher, though, Slim Shady's actually got a pretty long history of open Frank Castle adulation that makes his reaction here even more endearing.

Eminem's love of comics came through early on in his career when he dressed up as Robin in his "Without Me" video, but it was in 2009 that he really let his geek flag fly by dressing up as The Punisher for two incredibly dramatic covers of XXL Magazine, which included a special edition Marvel comic insert featuring none other than -- you guessed it -- Eminem and The Punisher.

In the issue, Eminem's friends are taken out by The Punisher during a concert, and after a misunderstanding, he ends up gunning down Frank Castle in retaliation while spitting lyrics to "Kill You," like "You don't want to f--- with Shady 'cuz Shady will f---in' kill you." In the end, it turns out Punisher (who, phew, had on his trusty bulletproof vest) was only trying to protect him from another friend-turned-hitman who was hired to kill him in the name of censorship, and the two end up working together. So, yep. Eminem got his very own Punisher comic special 10 years ago, long before Netflix even gave the green light to The Punisher. When the man says he's upset about Netflix canceling The Punisher, he means it.

On the bright side, the internet seems to think that maybe this'll be a blessing in disguise for Eminem, because if Disney puts together its own Punisher series, Mathers can dust off those 8 Mile acting chops and finally bring this thing full circle. We'll see.