Frank Castle became the Punisher after his family was murdered, leaving his world shattered. He dedicated himself to waging his one-man war on crime after the mafia killed everyone he loved. However, all of that did not end his ability to love.
One of the many women he came to care for–and the one he developed the closest attachment to–was the assassin Elektra Natchios. Although she is better known for her long-standing relationship with Daredevil, Elektra and Frank Castle once became a power couple. But as with most things in both of their lives, this romance ended in tragedy.
Their relationship was revealed in 2013’s Thunderbolts #7 by Daniel Way and Phil Noto. This version of the Thunderbolts team was primarily comprised of outlaw antiheroes under the command of General Thunderbolt Ross in his Red Hulk persona. Other members of the team included Deadpool, Venom, Mercy, and the Leader, going by the new name Red Leader.
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After Deadpool hit on Elektra, she turned him down by revealing she was sleeping with Punisher. This relationship began as emotionless sex, but over time, both feelings and complications grew between them. When Elektra took it upon herself to kill her brother Orestez, who was a dangerous murderer, she could not go through with it, even though she told Frank that she killed him–a lie he saw through. Punisher hunted down and killed Orestez, sparing Elektra the pain of killing her own family, but this caused a strain, as he resented the lies.
The two eventually fell in love, something heavily emphasized when Ben Blacker and Ben Acker took over scripting the series. Here, the story of their romance drew upon their first meeting, as depicted in Garth Ennis and Tom Mandrake’s Punisher #27. Frank had been targeting the hideouts of various mob members, only to find Elektra had already killed everyone each time he showed up. When he crashed the penthouse of a mob boss named Vic Strega, Punisher arrived just in time to watch Elektra cut the man’s heart out. She claimed that since all of her victims were from Frank’s list of targets, they deserved to die. But her reason to kill was dubious as she murdered them out of boredom. After gunning down Strega’s men, Punisher asked her out to dinner.
Punisher had Strega’s heart bronzed and gave it to Elektra as a romantic gesture in Thunderbolts #30. It was one of several macabre gestures the two used as part of their shared murderous love language. They fought together in the field and worked as a great power couple when killing side-by-side. They also sparred in their downtime. However, both were loners by nature and between Frank’s brooding uncompromising code and Elektra’s mercurial duplicity, they were ultimately incompatible.
Punisher eventually revealed that he knew Elektra lied about killing Orestez, so did it himself. Elektra then claimed she had manipulated him into doing that for her, which was apparently the closest she could come to asking for help. She pointed out that relationships require compromise, so Frank would have to get used to it. Unfortunately, the Punisher does not compromise. Each of them cared about the other too much to harm the other, but this was the breaking point, leading to Frank stealing the bronzed heart back from Elektra’s apartment.
Frank explained his actions by saying he knew she was trouble from the first time he saw her. However, there was one final revelation as Elektra tried to fight for their relationship. She had been in Central Park on the day Frank’s family was killed and watched the hit go down, unable to stop it. Elektra was tied to Punisher from the moment his old life ended and his new one began. But even that was not enough to make Frank Castle compromise. He insisted they were still done, holding the heart in front of him–and Elektra cut it in two with her sai, the broken heart ironically signaling the end of their relationship.
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