Jigsaw simmers behind a blank-slate mask in new clip from The Punisher Season 2

When your good-guy hero is so conflicted, tortured, and inwardly scarred that he’s really an anti-hero like The Punisher’s Frank Castle, you really have to give your bad guys some serious issues if you want them to stand apart.

That appears to be just what Netflix is doing with Jigsaw as Season 2 of The Punisher gets ready to make an impact this month. Castle (Jon Bernthal) already handed Billy Russo (Ben Barnes) the physical scars that’ll set him on the path toward Jigsaw levels of evil in the new season, but as this Netflix clip makes clear, the real scarring is happening on the inside. 

It looks as though Russo will be using his still-healing wounds as a chance to hit the reset button; an opportunity to decide just what kind of villain he wants to be — and he evidently is getting some all-too-eager help from a supposedly therapeutic source.

This is the first lingering look at Jigsaw following Netflix’s ultra-stylized tease last week, which riffed heavily on the warring identity struggle between Frank’s win-at-all-costs version of vigilante heroism, and Jigsaw’s persistent, mad fixation on self-torment.

It’s a relationship that’s followed the duo through the comics, where the Len Wein and Ross Andru-created character often holds a mirror up to Castle’s inner demons — with plenty of ambiguity as to who’s truly the more disturbed.

With a good look at Jigsaw and a release date finally on the horizon, the pieces are falling into place: Season 2 of The Punisher hits hard at Netflix beginning Jan. 18.