Thunderbolts* (2025)

It's Marvel Monday and the antiheroes assemble!

After finding themselves ensnared in a death trap, an unconventional team of antiheroes must go on a dangerous mission that will force them to confront the darkest corners of their pasts.

May 2, 2025 | Theatrical Release

Director: Jake Schreier

Writers: Eric Pearson, Joanna Calo, Kurt Busiek

Cast:

• Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova
• Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes
• Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine
• Lewis Pullman as Robert Reynolds
• David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov
• Wyatt Russell as John Walker
• Hannah John-Kamen as Ava Starr

Things kick off with Yelena blowing up a laboratory for CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. Why? Valentina is trying to erase any evidence connecting her to the O.X.E. Group and its mysterious "Project Sentry."

With Valentina facing impeachment, she decides the best way to clean up her mess is to send four of her former operatives—Yelena, John Walker, Ava Starr, and Antonia Dreykov—to a secret O.X.E. facility with one very simple instruction: kill each other.

Naturally, things don't go according to plan.

Ava kills Antonia, but then a random dude named Bob shows up and he doesn't seem to know how he got there. The group quickly realizes they weren't sent there to complete a mission—they were sent there to be killed alongside the evidence of Valentina's crimes. So they decide to work together. After coming into contact with Bob, Yelena and Walker also experience disturbing visions of some of their worst memories.

Valentina learns the group survived and discovers that Bob was actually a presumed-dead volunteer from the Sentry experiments. When she arrives at the facility, Bob draws enemy fire so Yelena, Walker, and Ava can escape. The problem is that Bob is apparently bulletproof, can fly, and has absolutely no idea what is happening to him.

Bob is eventually captured and taken to Manhattan where Valentina plans to introduce Bob to the public as a new superpowered hero, hoping the PR stunt will save her from impeachment.

Yelena's father figure Alexei overheard Valentina's plan while working as a freelance chauffeur and comes to rescue her. John Walker sarcastically gives the group a name—the Thunderbolts—inspired by Yelena's childhood soccer team.

Things get even messier when Congressman Bucky Barnes learns what's happened. With the help of Valentina's assistant Mel, who suspects Valentina might be the bad guy, Bucky captures the Thunderbolts and plans to have them testify during Valentina's impeachment proceedings. But after learning what happened to Bob, the group decides their new priority is getting into the Watchtower and finding him.

They discover that Valentina has convinced Bob to become a superhero called Sentry. Unfortunately, Sentry is basically unstoppable. He easily takes down the Thunderbolts, but refuses to kill them when Valentina orders him to, believing they're not actually a threat. Then Bob starts to lose control.

As his power grows, Bob turns against Valentina. Mel uses a failsafe kill switch to incapacitate him, but instead of solving the problem, it unleashes something much, much worse: the Void.

The Void is Bob's destructive alter ego, born from his depression, insecurities, trauma, and the effects of the Sentry procedure. And now it's taking over New York City, covering the city in darkness and trapping people inside visions of their own worst memories.

The Thunderbolts realize that the only way to stop the Void is to reach Bob from the inside, so Yelena enters the darkness and is forced to confront her own traumatic past as a Black Widow. Eventually, she finds Bob hiding in a recreation of his childhood bedroom.

The rest of the Thunderbolts join her, and together they make their way through Bob's memories. They find the Void, but it absolutely wrecks them.

Bob tries to fight back, but the Void is threatening to completely consume him. That's when the Thunderbolts do the one thing that no one else has been able to do: they remind Bob that he's not alone. They hug him, tell him they believe in him, and somehow manage to give him the strength to take control of the Void.

The darkness disappears, New York is saved, and everyone gets their memories back.

With the Void defeated, the Thunderbolts are ready to finally take Valentina down. But Valentina has one more trick up her sleeve. She holds a press conference and announces that the Thunderbolts are actually the NEW AVENGERS, taking credit for everything they just accomplished.

The team reluctantly goes along with it, but Yelena makes sure Valentina knows exactly where they stand.

"We own you now."

And honestly? She isn't wrong.

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