When Marvel Studios officially announced Thunderbolts* for a 2024 release date (thereafter delayed due to the SAG-AFTRA strikes), the audience’s reaction was alarmingly similar to what the in-film characters face. After all, who would trust a ragtag group of antiheroes, clearly traumatized by their pasts, to save anything—be it the world or the Marvel Cinematic Universe?
But the Florence Pugh-led team of sidelined MCU characters pulls through, and how.
Most of these characters were introduced when the Original Avengers were still around, and their identities largely revolved around them. Sebastian Stan’s James “Bucky” Barnes probably had the most limelight of them all, being the notorious Winter Soldier and being an inadvertent cause of the Civil War. But he was lumped with Steve Rogers’ story, just like Pugh’s Yelena Belova was Natasha Romanoff’s (Scarlett Johansson) sister.
But now the Avengers are gone—a point Marvel has been making for six years now—and they are all that remain.
The review will naturally contain SPOILERS. If you have not seen the movie, now is the time to stop scrolling. Heads up: Watch or recap Black Widow and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier before watching Thunderbolts* to understand the central characters and their pasts.
Enemies to barely tolerable allies
The movie starts with Yelena completing yet another cleanup job for Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who is quite attached to the ‘de’ in her name. We saw her hire Yelena in the post-credits of Black Widow and extend a similar offer to John Walker (Wyatt Russell) at the end of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
While she was somewhat mysterious in her previous appearances, it becomes clear early on in the movie what Valentina’s objective was. As the director of the CIA and someone with a penchant for secret human experiments, she likes to politely hunt individuals with certain skills when they are at their lowest and most vulnerable. She puts them on her payroll and makes them dependent on her.
When Congress threatens impeachment and moves to shut down her O.X.E. Group antics, Vanentina does not think twice before dispatching all the mercenaries on contract to a single location to wipe out any remaining evidence. The evidence, in this case, is the heroes themselves.
Yelena, Walker, Ava Starr a.k.a. Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) from Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Antonia Dreykov a.k.a. Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) from Black Widow go after each other in a secluded O.X.E. warehouse. For a while, they find themselves in a version of The Office’s finger gun standoff before realising they were sent here to kill each other.
Meanwhile, they meet Bob.
Lewis Pullman impresses from his first scene as an awkward Robert Reynolds, who has clearly been experimented on in Valentina’s secret “Sentry” project and does not remember anything.
Together, they find a way out of getting scorched alive at the complex and get past the hordes of soldiers sent by Valentina. A surprise move by Bob, originally meant to be heroic, lands him in the Contessa’s hands anyway.
The five stages of grief
Despite spot-on comic timing, the movie's overarching theme is trauma. In a way, the five main characters of Thunderbolts* seemed to be in five different stages of grief. They’ve all lost people, time, and a life they can never return to.
Alexei is in denial. He sits in his cluttered home, ordering takeouts and watching old videos of his Red Guardian days, unable to move on. The state of his room is a surefire flashback for anyone who has suffered from grief.
John is angry. His anger leads to his downfall in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, where he publicly beats a man to death with Steve Rogers’ shield. He not only loses his reputation, but his wife and kids leave him, too. At Valentina’s “Junior Varsity Captain America” comment, he quickly reaches for the gun and is stopped by Bucky’s warning. He is impatient and hasty with his actions, nearly causing the team to fall to their deaths during the escape.
Bucky’s experience in this movie is not quite linear. We have already seen him try to tackle his past by going to therapy and making amends with the families of those he killed as the brainwashed Hydra asset. That would count as bargaining. In Thunderbolts*, he is a Congressman, still trying to do the right thing the right way.
Yelena suffers from depression. It is evident in everything she does and says, not just the heart-to-heart chats with Bob or Alexei. Her signature glibness attempts to mimic Natasha’s curated cheek but always comes off with a tinge of sadness and self-sabotage. She can’t forgive herself, she suffers from survivor’s guilt, and she can’t see any purpose in anything she does.
Ava’s arc is interesting. The movie doesn’t explain what she did after the events of Ant-Man and the Wasp or how she ended up working for Valentina. But it seemed to me that she accepts what had happened to her. She talks about it, but without the bite, and is the first to do what needs to be done in any situation. The Ghost was one of my favorite standalone antagonists from the pre-Endgame era, made funnier by the whole Baba Yaga comparisons, and I’d love to know more about her past and the missing years.
Clearly, this superhero stuff comes with its baggage, and sometimes it is nice to see that addressed beyond Fortnite jokes and a prosthetic beer belly. By the movie's end, they all come out more healed than they went in. In fact, you can't help but like John Walker quite a lot, which is an insane turn of events given the hate the character and the actor received after the TV show.
The inevitable found family
I love a good found-family trope. The superhero genre relies heavily on it, but I won't ever grow tired of it as long as it's done well. My favorites examples would be Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., followed by James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy. By the time Yelena, Ava, and John escape in a stolen military vehicle, you can tell they are also about to become one.
The escape sequence serves as a bonding experience for the characters where they casually exchange anecdotes of tragic personal histories. From Yelena being an enslaved assassin to Ava being tortured like a lab rat, the darker and more serious subtext of the movie starts seeping through in bits and pieces.
Somewhere in between, Ava shoots Antonia right in the head, which was one of the anti-climactic moments in the movie for me. Why put the Taskmaster in all the posters and promote her as a significant character only to kill her off so unceremoniously? One explanation would be to tie up a loose end without wasting more storyline on a questionably adapted character.
Later, when the group is in Alexei’s anti-boredom limo, the Red Guardian (David Harbour) makes an underrated observation about Yelena: How the light inside her, that was dim the last time they met, even by “Eastern European standards,” is no longer as muted. Working as part of a team clearly suits Yelena, even though she would not be one to admit it.
All this happens while they're being chased by Valentina's men. They are eventually rescued and then put in chains by Bucky. It is one of the movie's only cool, superhero-y, fan service-y sequences. There is no way for a Marvel fan to see Bucky on a motorcycle on a highway and not immediately think of Captain America and the Winter Soldier. It melts one's heart to see how far he has come.
The Void
Yelena went from hurting people for the Red Room to hurting other people for Valentina in a manner that reminded me of Natasha wondering whose lies she was telling after the Hydra fallout. She traded in one corrupt organization for another, and Yelena, whose fate is so intertwined with her adoptive older sister, seemed to follow in her footsteps.
But Natasha had Clint Barton, Nick Fury, the Avengers, and the entirety of S.H.I.E.L.D. to have her back while it lasted. She was part of a team, believing she was making a difference.
Yelena fell down the assassin-to-mercenary pipeline. Her deadpan, self-deprecating humor about loneliness and depression overcasts the movie from the first frame, and it is never too far away from the surface.
It finally boils over once they escape the Watchtower, previously the Stark Tower-turned-Avengers Tower, from the overpowered new avatar of Bob. Going by Sentry, he can now chew them out without breaking a sweat.
Yelena storms off, hopeless, aimless, and confident in their “loser” status. Alexei chases her down. The conversation that follows is simple — one that reminds you of the MCU of old. Yelena finally breaks down.
She bleeds out on a random street of New York from all the sorrow gnawing at her insides for months, for years. The loss of both her families, the torment of the Red Room, the guilt of her actions, and the grief of losing Natasha again culminated in one vulnerable confession — she is so lonely. There is a void inside her, and she doesn’t know what to do with it.
Pugh is brilliant in this scene, as she is in most scenes. She wears Yelena’s pain like skin. When she’s done with the scene, you’re left wondering how something as complex as depression can be made so tangible through a screen. The relief on Yelena's face when Alexei says he sees the good in her is just as real as her sorrow was a minute ago.
The repeated mention of “Void” throughout the movie mainly references Sentry’s evil alter-ego, who soon appears and turns people into shadows. But the void is also Yelena’s, and Ava’s, and John’s, and Bucky’s, and maybe even Valentina’s.
The circle moment
Following Void’s entry, Thunderbolts* turns a page and becomes something darker and more sinister. He traps everyone in the city in their past, forcing them to relive everything that has gone wrong in their lives.
But before that, he lays waste to the city, recalling the Battle of New York in The Avengers. There is no alien army or God of Mischief, but there are still people to save. The Thunderbolts rally together to do what they can. At one point, John gets under a huge chunk of concrete to save an elderly woman. When it threatens to crush him, the other four put their palms and shoulders against the slab and manage to topple it onto the other side.
The onlookers cheer and clap; just like that, the Thunderbolts get their own Avengers circle moment.
We only see Yelena’s perspective inside the Void, but given what we know of Bucky and Ava’s pasts, I’m glad they kept it for another time.
It turns out that Bob is as much a captive in there as everyone else. He is stuck in his childhood home, with the tell-tale sounds of domestic violence echoing around the room. Without being preachy, the climax nails how it feels like being trapped by your past — when you see yourself age and the world moves on as usual, but in your head, you fail to leave those rooms and those memories.
When push comes to shove, Bob steps up and faces the Void — his inner demons — and tries to pummel it into oblivion. But sometimes that is not enough, and it takes another hand or two, or even three — the more the merrier — to power through whatever mental health issues one struggles with.
Yelena lends that hand, breaking free of the bonds the Void put her in. The rest join in, and together they help Bob pull himself out. The sun shines on New York once again.
The asterisk and post-credits
Valentina, forever looking out for no one but herself, announces that this was her plan all along. She introduces the Thunderbolts as her personal heroes-for-hire, the New Avengers.
This is where the asterisk at the end of the movie’s title reveals itself to be a smart, smart move. Before the credits roll, Thunderbolts* changes to The New Avengers, leaving the audience feeling various degrees of “Huh, so that’s what it was about!” The title card graphics show newspaper clippings, blasting them for claiming the title.
“Not my Avengers,” is the one that caught my eye the most. It is one again synonymous with what fans in the real world feel about them, how they can never replace the Original Avengers no matter how much they try.
The post-credits scene delves into it more. They are seemingly not accepted by Sam Wilson’s Captain America, who is building a separate Avengers team.
Then there’s the two-second Fantastic Four tease, which further cements the widespread theory that Reed Richards and Co. will fail to save their world from the impending doom Silver Surfer warns them about in the trailer and end up in this one.
There is a lot more to unpack from this movie, which isn't without its flaws. Sentry’s introduction could lead to many potential storylines in the future. Given that we’re keeping Bob as a good guy, I’d love to see Emma Frost of the X-Men helping him separate himself from the Void and become the celebrated hero he was meant to be.
Overall, Thunderbolts* is a 4 out of 5 stars for me. My only major grievances are the treatment of Taskmaster and the lack of Ava Starr’s backstory, and a minor grievance would be far fewer scenes of Bucky Barnes on a motorcycle than we deserved.
Excited to see what the New “AvengerZ” do next!
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