Marvel Studios has created its own rival to DC's iconic Gotham, and it's been right under the audience's noses all along. For decades, DC has had a creative advantage over Marvel in this regard. Gotham, a grim urban landscape based on real-life cities like Chicago, Pittsburgh, and New York, has been a living, breathing character in its own right, most recently in Matt Reeves' The Batman. In 2026, Marvel takes another stab at answering this challenge, creating a New York City neighborhood no one would want to live in.
Marvel Studios' Punisher: The Last Kill introduces a new contender for Gotham City: Little Sicily, a neighborhood so lawless that it's often compared to Batman's notoriously dysfunctional homeland. The two share many similarities, yet remain distinct, given their respective cinematic universes.
The most obvious difference is scale. Gotham is an entire city, a sprawling metropolis where corruption typically permeates every institution, from the police to charities.
Matt Reeves' recent interpretation has significantly deepened this mythology, presenting Gotham as a living testament to systemic failure, where crumbling gothic architecture looms over rain-soaked streets. Soon, James Gunn's new DC Universe will feature its own version of Gotham.
Little Sicily, by contrast, is merely a neighborhood, a small suburb engulfed in chaos. It's smaller in scale, but it's precisely this intimacy that makes the lawlessness that reigns there startling to viewers, especially after the second season of Daredevil: Rebirth and a couple of months before the release of Spider-Man: New Day.
In other ways, Gotham's dark atmosphere is largely about fighting at night, with its worst manifestations revealed under the cover of shadow and neon.
In Little Sicily, as shown in a special presentation, the same internal clock is missing.
Violence reigns relentlessly in broad daylight, on every corner, at any time of day. A bandit throws an old man's dog under a moving truck. Bounty hunters storm an apartment complex. A convenience store suddenly finds itself under siege. In "The Last Kill" in Little Sicily, there is no safe time, only varying degrees of danger.
To make matters clear, the news report at the beginning of the special provides crucial information: the Gnucci crime family, despite all their brutality, actually controlled the area.
As one woman put it in a news report: «"When everyone was afraid to rob and steal, everything was fine. But now? Chaos reigns.".
Apparently, the Gnucci family maintained a violent peace, and when Frank Castle disbanded them, that order collapsed.
It's a dynamic all too familiar to Gothamites: the fall of one crime family, the Falcones or the Maronis, rarely brings peace to the streets.
However, both cities share one defining trait: a ruthless protector operating outside the law. Batman has long been Gotham's dark protector, and by the end of "The Last Kill," Castle has fully embodied that archetype in Little Sicily, albeit with one important difference.
Castle is now driven by more than just vengeance. His decision to save store owner Dre and his family rather than pursue Ma Gnucci marks a turning point, a shift from vengeance to justice. When Charlie hands him a paper rose, and he places it on his daughter Lisa's grave, the message is clear: the Punisher now fights for the living, even if that still means killing those he (and their victims) deem worthy.
Of course, one of Batman's cardinal rules, like Marvel's Daredevil's, is that he will not kill his enemies, no matter how terrible their actions.
Judging by the ending of "The Last Kill," Little Sicily's future looks brighter, as Castle himself becomes the deterrent the Gnuccis once were. In any case, Marvel has created something rare: a neighborhood with enough darkness and moral complexity to rival Gotham.
On a much larger scale, however, New York City as a whole has one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's deepest histories, which will soon be explored in greater detail in Spider-Man: New Day, out July 31, which will see the return of Bernthal's Punisher.
How 'The Punisher' Sets Up 'Spider-Man 4'«
While "One Last Kill" doesn't make any overt references to Spider-Man: New Day, with no cameos or direct references, it does serve as a bridge between the man seen in the first season of Daredevil: Reborn and the fully costumed vigilante wreaking havoc on New York City in the New Day trailer.
Director Reynaldo Marcus Green told The Direct that this special allows viewers «"to find out about his psychological state before he turns into Spider-Man.".
Frank Castle leaves The Last Kill in a completely new role: he is a true avenger, killing not out of personal revenge, but to protect the innocent.
It's this evolution that Brand New Day will inherit. And it creates a fascinating dynamic: both Castle and Peter Parker are vigilantes operating outside the law, but their philosophical methods are completely opposed.
This tension between Spider-Man's restraint and the Punisher's lethality, similar to the dynamic between Frank Castle and Matt Murdock, promises to make this one of the most exciting collaborations in the modern history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.