Thunderbolts Looks Like The Best Marvel Team Yet
Marvel’s Thunderbolts just might have gotten everything right. And the studio could really use the win. In the comic book world, sometimes there’s nothing better than antiheroes. They make for the best main characters because the morals have gone askew, the methods are iffy, and the tongue-in-cheek nature of their hero status makes for just straight-up great watching.
This looks to be the case with Thunderbolts, which, from the first teaser trailer, might be the most entertaining Marvel team yet assembled. The three-minute window into the movie has just about everything you could want from a superhero flick, with humor, pathos, a kickass song, and some of the most entertaining characters we have in this franchise.
Check out the Thunderbolts teaser trailer and see what we mean.
Things start off with Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova/ Black Widow paying a visit to a down-bad David Harbour’s Red Guardian. It’s a quick reminder about the nature of the characters we met in Black Widow. She’s a too-serious asskicker, and he’s a former hero-turned-egotistical slob. Just perfect.
From there, Thunderbolts sets on a course to bring together a rag-tag group of sort-of heroes who’ve been assembled for nefarious purposes. In addition to Pugh and Harbour, we get a return of Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes/ Winter Soldier, Wyatt Russell’s John Walker/ US Agent (formerly Captain America), Hannah John-Kamen’s Ava Starr/ Ghost, Lewis Pullman’s Sentry, and Olga Kurylenko’s Taskmaster.
Thunderbolts sets on a course to bring together a rag-tag group of sort-of heroes who’ve been assembled for nefarious purposes
Most of these folks we’ve seen at other stops along the Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline, but teaming them up here keeps the correct vibe. The Thunderbolts group is assembled by, though quickly at odds with, Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, whom we first met at the end of Black Widow. She’s basically the Marvel version of DC’s Amanda Waller, a well-positioned and ruthless woman whose power is bringing together those with actual powers to do her bidding.
This Thunderbolts group is duped into all being on the same mission, and because of it, ends up working together. That’s easy to see coming, but the real win here looks like the interplay between the characters.
Because each of them isn’t your standard do-gooder hero, having them forced to play nice (despite their overwhelming impulse to play mean) is where this flick should make its bones. We see as much in these brief moments of action-fueled levity.
Marvel’s Thunderbolts includes Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, and Hannah John-Kamen
Because we know characters like Black Widow, Red Guardian, Winter Soldier, Ghost, and US Agent have their own dark pasts, the movie is set up for redemption arcs almost across the board. It’s a good place for Marvel and a testament to playing the longer game with some of these characters. The franchise hasn’t gotten everything right, but bringing this group together does look like the right move.
Marvel’s Thunderbolts is directed by Jake Schrier (Paper Towns) with a script from an impressive writer’s room of Eric Pearson (Thor: Ragnarok, Black Widow), Lee Sung Jin (Beef), and Joanna Calo (Bojack Horseman). It is due in theaters on May 2, 2025. We’ll be ready for this one and it looks like a total winner.
