Rosario Dawson Won't Appear As Claire Temple In 'The Punisher'
Our favorite night nurse has (temporarily) been transferred.
Rosario Dawson has confirmed that she won't be appearing as Claire Temple in Netflix's Marvel show The Punisher due to scheduling conflicts, making this the first of the Defenders-related series that will not feature her.
It's a little ironic that Frank Castle may have to go without a nurse in a series that promises to be even bloodier and gorier than the bone-cracking Daredevil.
The Punisher is a spin-off of the second season of Daredevil, which featured Jon Bernthal's electrifying performance as Frank Castle, otherwise known as the Punisher. Claire and Frank never crossed paths in Daredevil, though both characters got their start in Marvel's flagship Marvel series. While Claire Temple, our resident nurse to the streetwise superheroes and unwitting fifth member of the Defenders, has appeared in all the Marvel-Netflix series up to Defenders, she will not make her cursory cameo in The Punisher.
Dawson said in an interview with Collider:
At the end of the day, it's really hard to get all of those casts together. There are so many times where I really want it to happen. I really wanted to do a cameo on The Punisher, but it doesn't always work that way.
It sort of makes sense — The Punisher has been marketed as fairly separated from the rest of Marvel's Netflix shows, and Frank Castle won't even be making an appearance in the Defenders miniseries that brings together the storylines and superheroes from Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist. Frank and Deborah Ann Woll's Karen Page will be the only familiar faces in The Punisher, leading me to believe it will be a whole different entity, despite taking place in the same version of New York City without crossing paths with the other shows at all.
While it sounds like Claire's role wouldn't have amounted to more than a quick glance in The Punisher, her appearances have helped tie together the Defenders-verse — much like Phil Coulson's S.H.I.E.L.D. agent did in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies leading up to The Avengers. Claire's appearances have ranged from a central role in series like Daredevil and Luke Cage, to a glorified cameo in Jessica Jones. Let's run down how Claire Temple has figured into the street-wise Defenders-verse.
Daredevil
Claire first appears in the second episode of Daredevil, after finding an injured Matt Murdock in the dumpster outside her apartment. After patching him up, she finds herself immediately embroiled in the Russian mob's plot to defeat Daredevil, witnessing and helping Matt torture one of the Russians for information, before later getting kidnapped by the mob herself. She aided Matt sporadically as he continued his battle against the mob and Wilson Fisk and briefly struck up a romantic relationship with him before his martyrdom complex causes her to break it off.
In the second season, Claire is still working at Metro General Hospital, treating the numerous victims of Frank Castle's vigilantism. Her life is endangered once again, however, when Matt asks her to take in experiment subjects of The Hand as under-the-table patients at Metro General. When her friend dies in an attack by The Hand on the hospital, Claire quits Metro General, frustrated by the board's attempt to cover it up.
Jessica Jones
In between the seasons of Daredevil, Claire is the one working at the ER when Jessica Jones brings in a wounded Luke Cage, whose close-range gunshot to the head caused him to go comatose. Recognizing his superhuman abilities (and unable to break his unbreakable skin to treat him), Claire takes him and Jessica back to Jessica's apartment, where she helps treat him by sticking a needle through his eyeball.
Luke Cage
After quitting Metro General, Claire heads back to her mother's home in Harlem, where Luke Cage is currently residing. Recognizing him, she teams up with him as he battles Cottonmouth and Diamondback and becomes a fugitive of the law.
After Luke gets injured by Diamondback's special armor-penetrating bullets, she takes him to the in-hiding doctor, Noah Burnstein, who spearheaded the prison experiments that gave Luke his powers. She helps heal Luke and destroy the evidence of the experiment before they head back to fight the final battle against Diamondback and clear Luke's name
Iron Fist
Claire meets Danny Rand while taking classes at Colleen Wing's dojo after finding herself victimized and kidnapped by various supervillains. She learns about his past in K'un-Lun and his vaguely unimpressed by his Iron Fist title. And that's about it.
The Punisher wrapped shooting in April and will be released this year, though it's unclear whether it will be before or after The Defenders miniseries drops on Netflix on August 18, 2017.