A memorial tribute to the late Stan Lee has seemingly been removed from The Punisher’s second season finale, now streaming on Disney Plus.
Screen Rant reported on the change, noting that a dedication that once read “In Loving Memory of Stan Lee” no longer appears ahead of the credits at the end of the final episode of The Punisher Season 2 following the show’s recent shift to Disney Plus. However, a similar Stan Lee tribute that appears in the final season of Jessica Jones remains in place.
The now-absent tribute to Stan Lee in The Punisher’s final season proved to be somewhat controversial when it first appeared on screens in 2019 as some viewers felt it was placed at an inappropriate time due to the violent nature of the scene that preceded it, in which Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle opened fire on a group of criminals inside of a warehouse.
There has been no official comment from Disney on the apparent removal of the Stan Lee tribute from The Punisher, but another that was included in Luke Cage has also seemingly been cut recently. A memorial slide honoring the late actor Reg E. Cathey, who played Reverend James Lucas, Luke Cage’s father, is now missing from that show’s Season 2 finale.
This comes shortly after it was discovered that The Falcon and the Winter Solider had been censored, removing blood and generally sanitizing the otherwise violent show on Disney Plus. However, a source within Disney later confirmed to IGN that the wrong file had been published by accident, and that the non-censored version would soon be restored.
When Netflix’s Marvel shows moved over to Disney Plus, many fans worried that the more violent shows would be censored. Instead, as reported by IGN, all of them made it through fully intact, including a scene in Daredevil that shows a man being shot in the face and another of Wilson Fisk smashing a thug’s head with a car door.
The newest MCU show to premiere on Disney+ is Moon Knight. IGN awarded Moon Knight’s first episode a 7 out of 10, saying the debut “asks for patience as it offers very few specifics about poor Steven’s mental state, but Isaac’s ‘everyman’ is such an endearing rom-com style fool that it all makes for an enticing introduction to a very unique crusader.”
Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.
