Marvel’s Cinematic Universe has been the king of the big screen for 15 years, but translating that success to television and back has been a difficult hurdle for the franchise to clear. After Avengers: Endgame, Marvel wisely chose to explore new frontiers, using shows on Disney+ to introduce new heroes and continue the journeys of surviving Avengers. With most of that table setting finally out of the way, Marvel’s most promising characters are headlining blockbuster affairs once more.
The problem is that not every Marvel fan is tuning into something like Ms. Marvel or The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which impairs attempts to continue those stories within the larger MCU. For all the effort the studio has put into its small-screen stories, the reception of these shows has been middling at best. It can be argued that Marvel has spread itself too thin with too many lackluster additions to the catalog. It would be unwise to count the franchise out, though: Marvel plans to come back in a major way in 2025, and its most talked-about movie could retroactively fix years of misfires.
At last week’s D23 Expo in Brazil, Marvel unveiled a special look at Thunderbolts* (yes, the asterisk is part of the title). The extended trailer teases the clash between infamous anti-heroes like Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), while balancing them with characters who haven’t yet had an adequate spotlight. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Black Widow’s Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) and Red Guardian (David Harbour), and Ant-Man and the Wasp’s Ghost (Hannah John Kamen) round out this cast of anti-Avengers.
It’s good that Marvel has found a place for the antagonists of MCU past, but Thunderbolts is also working to reconcile a handful of small-screen storylines. Yelena’s story may have begun in Black Widow, but it continued in Hawkeye, the 2021 miniseries that remains one of Marvel’s least-watched. The character makes an impression wherever she goes in the MCU, but Thunderbolts will position her as a true heavy-hitter capable of headlining a major chapter in the Marvel saga.
The same goes for some of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s antagonists. Russell made an indelible impression as “a dime store Captain America,” and he’s poised to steal the show in Thunderbolts. There’s also the Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who’s been quietly pulling strings since her introduction in 2021. Now, her dubious scheme has finally come to fruition, and we can only hope it won’t disappoint.
Marvel’s experimental phase didn’t have a lot of clear-cut winners, and problems do remain within the larger MCU. With the studio taking the time to think about its future, however, there’s a chance to recover in 2025. Thunderbolts is just one of Marvel’s attempts to make up for its checkered output, but it looks like it could be one of the most fun.
