Introduction
Before I get into why Thunderbolts* is a movie you absolutely should see in theaters, the answer to your immediate question is I’m not entirely sure why the title has an asterisk. I have an idea, though. Asterisks have a lot of different meanings and usages. Typically, asterisks indicate there is a note at the bottom of the page or in the sidebar. But this is a movie. There is no bottom of the page or sidebar.
In screenplays, asterisks usually denote revisions but can also signify scene changes or character actions. There is potential there, but does that mean the title is a revision? Nerds will point out that an asterisk means multiplication in math and a wild card in computer programming. Thanks, nerds, you’re definitely at the right movie.
Much like Captain America: Brave New World (2025), Thunderbolts* is an instance of the MCU telling a solid story while also consolidating a bunch of threads from previous films and series. Thunderbolts* is a direct sequel to Black Widow (2021), but the film also pulls in elements from Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), as well as The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021).
Synopsis
If you’re wondering what happened with Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), Red Guardian (David Harbour), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and Avengers Tower, you’re in luck. Don’t worry if you haven’t seen any of those characters’ (or buildings) movies recently. Five of them are former villains or anti-heroes. De Fontaine is the director of the CIA and shows up in a bunch of mid/post-credit scenes. And Avengers Tower is still just a building in Manhattan. There, all caught up.
Now, de Fontaine employs Walker and the three women as off-the-books mercenaries, and Red Guardian runs a limo service. When de Fontaine is in danger of being impeached for running illegal operations, she sends the mercenaries to destroy any and all evidence, including people. In their final assignment, they are all sent to a mountain vault to kill each other, except none of them are aware that the others all work for de Fontaine.
After an entertaining and humor-infused action scene, they discover a man named Bob (Lewis Pullman). Bob doesn’t know how he got there or remember anything going back to when he volunteered for one of de Fontaine’s experiments. Once they realize de Fontaine wants them all dead, they are forced to work together to escape the vault before they are incinerated.
It turns out Bob was part of the Sentry program, the very program de Fontaine is under investigation for. When de Fontaine figures out who Bob is, she stops at nothing to capture him, knowing that the experiments worked. Inevitably, the cobbled together team of anti-heroes, which eventually brings in Red Guardian and newly minted Congressman Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), will have to face Bob. But it’s different than the usual superhero showdown we’ve grown accustomed to.
Discussion
Another thing Thunderbolts* has in common with Brave New World is that the stakes are much smaller than the entire world or galaxy, or multiverse. Nobody is trying to get their hands on a MacGuffin that can turn back time or erase half of life, or is the ten rings. It’s just the ragtag team vs. Bob, but mostly just trying to stop de Fontaine from corrupting Bob. And, as one of them points out, none of them really have any superpowers. Just a lot of training, tech, and serum-induced strength.
But the real meat of this movie, like all of the really good Marvel flicks, is the characters. If it isn’t already clear, all of them are damaged individuals. That’s how they ended up working for de Fontaine in the first place. The film establishes this as the theme from its very first scene in which Yelena rotely executes a mission while lamenting that she is lost as a person. As the movie progresses, we learn that all of them are lost to some extent, even Bucky.
Keeping the stakes to a minimum allows the film to focus on the characters’ personal struggles and how they steer them in their interactions with the group. What I had kind of forgotten is how important the casting was to earlier Marvel successes. That’s not to say there have been any particularly bad casting choices, but how many nearly perfect choices there were. While everyone in this film gives really good performances, Harbour is fantastic, and Pugh is amazing.
Conclusion
As with all MCU movies, comedic banter is found throughout (but it’s the right amount as opposed to Thor: Love and Thunder), but Harbour injects an earnestness and sincerity that makes it seem perfectly natural. Pugh balances the humor with a palpable sense of depression and desperation to find meaning in her life. She’s so good, you’ll find yourself almost in tears at times. Over an assassin. It’s the kind of thing that’s been missing from most of the post-Endgame content. That “heart” that used to permeate earlier MCU films.
If Brave New World was a reset for the MCU (and I maintain it was a very solid reset), Thunderbolts* is a very good start to the next phase of the MCU. And that asterisk? Well, the movie gives a very obvious, surface-level answer. But I think it’s more than that. I think it’s a wink at us, saying there’s more where this movie came from. Or to put it nerdily, it’s a wild card.
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