The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) recently released its movie “Thunderbolts*” on May 2. The film’s plot follows a team of antiheroes and reformed villains forming to take on a dangerous mission that will force them to confront the darkest corners of their pasts. 

     These characters include Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Alexei Shostakov’s Red Guardian (David Harbour), Ava Starr’s Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Antonia Dreykov’s Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) and John Walker’s U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell). 

     Other returning actors include Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Valentina Allegrade Fontaine and Violet McGraw as young Yelena; actors making their MCU debut include Lewis Pullman as Robert ‘Bob’ Reynolds (Sentry), Eric Lange as Houston, Geraldine Viswanathan as Songbird, Joshua Mikel as Bob’s father and Chris Bauer as an unrevealed role. 

     There were a lot of fan theories about the “Thunderbolts*” movie — a lot of which revolve around the asterisk (*) in the film’s title. Some fans theorize about the fate of certain Thunderbolts’ members, namely Taskmaster and, more significantly, Yelena and Bucky. It is possible that Marvel may kill off any or all of them to advance the plot as martyrs; Marvel Studios already leaked the fate of Bucky upon encountering the Void. 

     Bucky has become one of the MCU’s most popular characters, becoming a fan-favorite despite his origins as Steve Rogers’ sidekick and then as The Winter Soldier, a brainwashed assassin. In later projects like “Captain America: Civil War” (2016), “Avengers: Infinity War” (2018) and “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” series from 2021, viewers can see how hard he has worked to fix his life — going to therapy, making a list of people he hurt and trying to make amends. His journey to reformation makes him a crucial component in the MCU. According to Marvel Studios, Bucky is the “de facto leader” of the Thunderbolts team. Additionally, in an interview, actor Sebastian Stan said that Bucky relates to the other members of the team because their backstories align.

     Another set of fan theories suggest it is to set up the comic’s Dark Avengers or Secret Avengers teams. 

     The Dark Avengers were originally a group of prominent Marvel supervillains or duped heroes that were marketed as popular Avengers; the Secret Avengers, however, is a covert black ops group, mostly consisting of characters who are either canonically dead in the MCU or have not been introduced to one another yet. Both Sentry and U.S. Agent were part of the Dark Avengers in the comics, and most of the other characters assembled in the “Thunderbolts*” film know a lot about covert operations, so either could be probable.

     Yelena, first introduced in “Black Widow” (2021) as Natasha Romanoff’s younger sister, is one of the MCU’s most skilled operatives. Like Natasha, she was formerly a Black Widow assassin. She spent most of her life being used as a weapon for Dreykov (Antonia’s father), but she ended up helping take down the Red Room. In the “Hawkeye” series from 2021, Yelena is shown doing another mission, this time to kill Clint Barton, whom she believes was directly responsible for her sister’s death. Her fighting skills make her a viable asset for the Thunderbolts team, but she is still morally ambiguous despite being one of the funniest characters.

Abby Dreistadt, Editor in Chief