The Avengers are no longer assembling, but don’t fret… the Thunderbolts are here. Not everyone is too happy with the team, as revealed at the end of the new Marvel movie.
Thunderbolts sees a whole new team of misfits brought together: Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Yelena Belova’s Black Widow (Florence Pugh), John Walker’s US Agent (Wyatt Russell), Antonia Dreykov’s Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), Alexei Shostakov’s Red Guardian (David Harbour), and Ava Starr’s Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen).
As well as seeing the return of Valentina “Val” Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), the MCU’s latest outing introduces a formidable superhero/villain in the form of Robert “Bob” Reynolds, aka the Sentry (Lewis Pullman).
What begins as a covert mission soon spirals into something far more dangerous, involving betrayal, buried secrets, and a dark entity known as the Void. Warning: spoilers ahead!
Thunderbolts ending reveals meaning behind asterisk
Right at the end of the movie, we learn the truth behind the Thunderbolts asterisk: it was a placeholder name, as the team of antiheroes are introduced to the world as the New Avengers.
You see, with the Avengers no longer assembling, the world is in desperate need of a new team of superheroes. Behind the scenes, Val has been steadily building her own squad, although unlike Nick Fury, she seems far more interested in power and influence than saving the day.
At the start of Thunderbolts, Val is under investigation by a government committee – including our new congressman, Bucky Barnes – for her ties to a shadowy organization known as the OXE Group.
The committee suspects OXE has been developing superheroes through unethical human experimentation. In an attempt to erase any evidence, Val sends Yelena, US Agent, Ghost, and Taskmaster on a final mission.
However, there’s a twist: Val’s actually trying to kill them off to cover her tracks. Not only do they survive (except poor Taskmaster, who is killed by Ghost), but they also awaken Bob – a mentally fragile man with unimaginable power.
Who is Bob Reynolds, aka The Sentry?
DisneyBob, a survivor of OXE’s experiments, becomes the Sentry – a godlike being with the power of a million exploding suns. We get a taster of his abilities when he helps the Thunderbolts escape.
A full SWAT team led by Val shoot their guns at him, and the bullets simply slide off his skin as if he’s made of titanium. Unaware of his abilities, he then shoots up into the sky like a rocket before plummeting back down to earth.
Val finds him unconscious and brings him back to Avengers Tower, seizing the opportunity to recruit him as her ultimate weapon.
Meanwhile, the Thunderbolts head away on foot, where they’re picked up by Red Guardian and then joined by Bucky Barnes. They decide to work together as a team, with Alexei suggesting they name themselves Thunderbolts after Yelena’s childhood soccer team.
When they arrive at the Avengers Tower to confront Val, they find a very different looking Bob. He’s switched out the scrubs for his famous Marvel Comics gold suit, and Val’s convinced him to dye his hair blond (giving him serious Homelander vibes).
As a show of his power, the Thunderbolts all attempt to take him out, but he effortlessly hurls them aside like ragdolls (he is meant to be stronger than all the Avengers combined, FYI). Yet instead of finishing them off, as Val ordered, he simply lets them go.
Furious, Val tells him off for disobeying her. He calmly reminds her he’s a god, at which point she reaches for the killswitch designed to neutralize his powers. He stops her, but her assistant, Mel (Geraldine Viswanathan), quietly activates it.
This causes Sentry to pass out, before a black shadow creeps over him. No one knows it yet, but Val and Mel have just activated the Void.
Enter the Void
DisneyYou see, the Sentry is cursed with a dark alter ego known as the Void, a manifestation of his trauma, rage, and deep-seated self-loathing. He’s a terrifying foe, one that has the power to take out entire cities.
After his activation, the Void – which appears as a silhouette version of Sentry – soars above New York and vanishes an attacking helicopter mid-air. People on the ground begin disappearing into shadows as he passes over them.
Rather than running away, Yelena walks into the path willingly, facing visions of her darkest memories from the Red Room and beyond. She eventually reaches a broken Bob inside the Void’s dimension, who confesses he has no control over his dark side.
Yelena urges him to fight back, but it’s only when the rest of the team – Ghost, Bucky, Red Guardian, and US Agent – rally around him and physically embrace him that the Void begins to dissipate. Bob regains control, and the people he vanished start to reappear.
In the post-credits scene, we see Bob’s powers have been deactivated to ensure the Void doesn’t take over again. Given we know the Thunderbolts will be in Avengers: Doomsday, we’ll have to wait and see if the Sentry/Void is gone or he’s just waiting to rise again.
Meet the New Avengers
DisneyEven though it’s the Thunderbolts who saved the day, Val uses this to her advantage, tricking the team into a press conference where she announces them as the New Avengers.
For a woman who wanted most of them dead just hours prior, she sure does have superhero levels of audacity. However, Yelena makes a very good point, whispering to Val, “We own you now.”
As the credits roll, we see a series of mock newspaper articles and think pieces from publications slamming the team, with quotes like “Not my Avengers” and “Bob who?”
There’s also news that Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), aka Captain America, is suing them because the Avengers name is trademarked, paving the way for a hilarious workaround from Alexei: the “New Avengerz”.
As well as bringing the humor, giving the Thunderbolts an Avengers mantle is a way for the MCU movie to tie into its comic book origins.
DisneyIn a conversation with Dexerto, director Jake Schreier explained, “ I know there’s corners of the internet that wish that this was more that first run of Thunderbolts where it’s villains masquerading as heroes.
“And I think the end of our movie is meant in some ways to honor that idea, but coming at it from a different angle where [we ask], ‘Are these really the right people to be this?’
“I think that the movie itself is kind of agnostic on that, both in our credits scene, where you get to see all the media and the kind of mixed reactions to that, and even in the post-credits scene.”
Schreier added, “It’s not the Avengers at the end. It’s the New Avengers. And I think in a world like this, where people are struggling with the kind of issues that these people are struggling with, we always talked about the fact that they don’t have to be the strongest heroes in the world.
“It’s not as much about power sets, [it’s about] why they are the exact right team to deal with this particular threat. That’s how this movie needs to work. And then as far as going forward, I think there’s a lot of fun that can be had in the conflict around whether they do or don’t fit as that thing.”
Thunderbolts is in cinemas now. You can also read about why Baron Zemo isn’t in the movie, check out every upcoming MCU title, and take a look at everything we know about Avengers: Secret Wars and The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
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