Exclusive: Ronda Rousey In Talks To Play Thundra In Captain America: New World Order
We've learned Ronda Rousey is in talks to play the super-strong Thundra in Captain America: New World Order.
Update 2024: With casting for Captain America: Brave New World all but set, it doesn’t appear Ronda Rousey will be playing Thundra in this movie.
She’s in the WWE, she used to be in the UFC, and now she may be coming to the MCU. Our trusted and proven sources have told us that wrestler, MMA fighter, and actress Ronda Rousey is in negotiations to play the super-strong warrior Thundra in Captain America: New World Order. With so few details available yet about the sequel, we don’t know exactly how her character fits into things, but we have some ideas.
With both Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) and Dr. Samuel Sterns, aka The Leader (Tim Blake Nelson) both confirmed for New World Order, the film is gearing up to be almost something of an unofficial Incredible Hulk spinoff. The character Ronda Rousey is in talks to play doesn’t have any particularly strong connections to Captain America in the source material, but she has a pretty strong link to the Hulk. She’s also connected to the Multiverse, which of course is all the rage right now in the MCU.
In the comics, as remembered by the Marvel Database, Thundra comes from an alternate dystopian future in which the “Battle of the Sexes” is a lot more literal, and the men and the women of Earth are split into warring nations. In 2008’s Hulk: Raging Thunder #1, Thundra travels to the past in order to retrieve the Hulk’s DNA (through a kiss) and use it to conceive her daughter Lyra, aka the Savage She-Hulk, Marvel’s third She-Hulk after Jennifer Walters and Betty Banner’s Red She-Hulk.
Thundra’s comic book history would make for a fairly convoluted MCU origin story — especially for a movie that’s already fairly crowded — so it seems likely it will be altered significantly for the Ronda Rousey version. Thundra might even be merged with another character like Lyra or Red She-Hulk. Really, that might be the most likely scenario considering all the gamma-powered characters either confirmed or rumored to be appearing in New World Order.
Regardless, Ronda Rousey is an excellent choice to play Thundra. Along with holding her own against the Hulk in Raging Thunder, Thundra has defeated the Fantastic Four’s rocky-skinned The Thing on a number of occasions. Buff and tough to beat, “Rowdy” Rousey is just about the perfect choice to play a woman who can go toe-to-toe with Marvel’s toughest.
While she hasn’t yet found as much big-screen success as male counterparts like Dwayne Johnson and John Cena, Ronda Rousey has already made a significant footprint in cinema. She’s appeared in Entourage, the 2019 Charlie’s Angels remake, 9-1-1, and most memorably she gave Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty the fight of her life as Kara in 2015’s Furious 7.
Captain America: New World Order is currently set to release on May 3, 2024 but we wouldn’t necessarily swear that that’s when you’ll get to see Ronda Rousey as Thundra. As we speak, Marvel is shifting their release schedule around to combat superhero fatigue, so we could see the film pushed back to later next year or perhaps even 2025.
