The new Thunderbolts* trailer just launched – here is everything important about it.
Maybe you heard about a pretty small, unimportant sports event called “Superb Owl” (or something like that) that happened a few days ago and if not, you didn’t muss a lot – they didn’t even care to show Taylor Swift long enough... However, Marvel seemingly invested some advertisement budget into placing a new trailer for one of their most anticipated upcoming installments during said event: the Thunderbolts* movie.
While the first teaser back in September 2024 didn’t give us too much information and was more about setting the mood, the new trailer for the movie that will launch on May 2 reveals a few plot bits and even helped to confirm some prior rumors.
So let’s have a look, shall we? Readers? Assemble!
Who Are The Thunderbolts Anyway?
The comic book origin of the Thundertbolts (from the main earth 616) tells the story of a group of villains that Baron Zemo rebranded as an Avengers-like team to let them operate under the cover of heroism while hiding his true intentions. Later, when Zemo revealed his plans to the world, the Thunderbolts defected and since then have been a name that was taken over by different groups of mostly antiheroes.
While we already know that the MCU’s version of the Thunderbolts will include Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) as their leader, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), the Red Guardian (David Harbour), U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russel), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), it’s not 100% clear what the story behind those antiheroes will be.
But the trailer gave us enough material to have more than a few well-educated guesses.
The New / Dark Avengers?
Captain America: Brave New World might be just around the corner, but since the movie isn’t out yet, we are not 100% sure about the whereabouts of the Avengers. Obviously, President Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross wants Sam Wilson to reassemble the team, but it seems like this either just didn’t happen like intended or the new Captain America just refused to do so, because right at the beginning of the Thunderbolts* trailer, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine says during a hearing that “The Avengers are not coming”.
The solution to whatever problem would under other circumstances be faced by the Avengers could be de Fontaine’s newly formed Thunderbolts*. Well... that’s at least the name they got so far. The asterik that has been a mystery since the beginning of the promo for the movie might hint at a renaming of the team as “New Avengers”, a rumor that is also supported by the fact that de Fontaine seemingly rebuilt Tony Stark’s Avenger’s Tower made it the new base of her organization (whether it’s the CIA she’s the director of so far, or – more comic book accurate – the more shadowy O.X.E.).
Sentry And The Void
When the teaser trailer also showed us Bob as a potential member of the Thunderbolts* but didn’t tell us anything else than just his name and the fact that he might not be affected by bullets, fans already speculated that “Bob” might be a nickname for Robert Reynolds.
In the comics, Reynolds was a drug addicted thief, who – robbing a laboratory – stumbled across an incredibly potent version of the super soldier serum. Mistaking it for some kind of modern opiate, he took the serum, injecting himself the “power of a million exploding suns” and becoming the super hero Sentry.
Even though there is no full front exposure of Sentry, the trailer gives us a glimpse of a costume that might not be as bright as the comic version but at least accurate enough to verify the theory of Bob being Sentry.
To get rid of any doubt, there is a strange darkness crawling through the streets of New York during the trailer, clearly being the MCU’s version of “the Void” – a dark entity that is basically the dark half of Sentry.
Thunderbolts vs. The Void?
With all this new information in the trailer, it’s more than likely that either Sentry happened to come to life in the same way he did in the comics with de Fontaine's organization being just the source of the new super soldier serum, or his whole existing being planned by her.
It’s possible that she now set up the Thunderbolts to fight Sentry that got corrupted by the Void, either taking him down or even turning him back to the good side, having him in their team as their version of Thor.
Are you excited for the Thunderbolts? What are you’re theories on all the things that happened in the trailer?