Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 127 minutes
Release Date: May 2nd, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Marvel Studios / Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Director(s): Jake Schreier
Writer(s): Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo / Eric Pearson (story) / Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley (Thunderbolts) / Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (Avengers) / Joe Simon and Jack Kirby (Captain America) / Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee (The Sentry)

You always make it worse.

We’ve seen the stingers. Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) scooping up all the could-be heroes and would-be villains to use as covert operatives doing who knows what in the shadows. John Walker (Wyatt Russell). Ava “Ghost” Starr (Hannah John-Kamen). Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh). So, it’s no surprise to see the latter on her latest mission to clean-up some laboratory stash of evidence de Fontaine needs nuked before her impending impeachment vote in front of Congress. Just another day on a thankless job.

Well, the isolation causes Yelena to feel the full breadth of her guilt and shame. She’s realizing this life leaves no room for anyone to share it with … or the sorrow of losing her sister Natasha is deep enough that it’s tricked her into thinking that regardless of it being true. So, she tells Valentina the next one is it. She’s ready to try balancing the scales like her sister did by becoming an Avenger. And, to her surprise, the boss agrees. Follow a rogue entity into a black site, discover what’s turned them traitor to procure it, leave no witnesses, and she’s free.

As we assume, however, Yelena is a “witness” too. A loose end tying up loose ends. Hence why screenwriters Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo expose the game almost as soon as she follows Ghost inside. Because if she’s supposed to kill Ghost, why is Walker trying to kill her? And then Antonia Dreykov (Olga Kurylenko) shows up to kill him? While it takes these expendables way too long to figure it out (mostly because the job comes with blinders, but also, in Walker’s case, because ego is a dangerous drug), we get it straight away.

The question then is whether any will succeed in their tasks before that realization since they’re going to need as much help as possible to collectively find an escape after the blast doors fall. It won’t be a trusting relationship or an efficient one considering they’re all alphas suffering emotionally precisely because they refuse to work well with others, but the Thunderbolts* are born, nonetheless. They’ll still need to begrudgingly collect Alexei (David Harbour) and be commandeered by Bucky (Sebastian Stan), but the “team” has formed.

Director Jake Schreier’s main plot is therefore revenge. The Thunderbolts want to get Valentina for attempting to murder them all and Bucky wants the Thunderbolts to turn state’s evidence and be the smoking gun in Congressman Gary’s (Wendell Pierce) impeachment proceedings. There’s just one more wrinkle with which to contend: Bob (Lewis Pullman). Who’s Bob? Well, he doesn’t even really know. But he was stashed in that black site and doesn’t remember anything before volunteering for a medical trial, so we can quickly guess it’s not good.

Everyone is on a collision course as a result and none of them quite know what to expect considering they’ve all allowed their dark sides to consume them. That goes for Bucky too despite having worked the past two MCU phases to walk into the light. You never fully shake that drive to paint outside the lines and thus the descent into self-loathing. Bob calls it the void, and it proves to be an apt label considering what occurs whenever he touches the others. They become transported into a painful memory to be reminded of their failings.

It makes for an absolutely fantastic Big Bad by way of The Sentry—an all-power God who is literally impervious to everything thrown his way. And when this guy goes full shame spiral? His entire body goes dark as though he’s a three-dimensional silhouette with two barely visible, glowing dots for eyes. It’s super unsettling and his attack is even more so considering he must only point at a person to poof them from existence with nothing but a shadow stain sprayed upon the asphalt. His loneliness and apathy threaten to consume everything.

I really like how Schreier and Marvel handle the narrative since its big world ramifications never overpower its small world stakes. This is a strictly character-driven plot about redemption … if those characters are willing to allow themselves to be redeemed. It treats that internal struggle well too considering it doesn’t demand some blanket idea of “forgiving yourself” to move on. These aren’t villains who chose their villainy. Each was pushed either through experimentation, slavery, or propaganda. Their way forward is acceptance.

Not of their actions, but of each other. It’s about becoming the mirror to coax out the people they all could have been if not for the abuse and/or torture they endured. Bucky serves as an example that it’s possible. Alexei’s toxic positivity makes him the annoying cheerleader they must appreciate and open themselves to just to shut him up. And Bob is the mission that they get to choose. Because he’s not just someone who needs saving from external and internal forces. He’s a troubled, broken soul like them. By saving him, they might also save themselves.

Their shame is manifested cinematically by way of the multi-dimensional rift rotation aesthetic from Doctor Strange. One nightmarish memory connects to the next through walls and mirrors with each escape throwing the character into another one from a totally different direction. Each room is meant to hold its victim hostage. To fill them with such despair that they’ll never be able to leave. It’s why they must break through the concrete and glass to find each other. Not to subdue the darkness, but to show it that it no longer controls them.

All the asterisk stuff is fun and ultimately kicks off what looks to be a more cohesive path forward after the disjointed doldrums of one-offs, misfires, and misunderstood installments post-Endgame, but it’s this impressive display of human vulnerability that makes Thunderbolts* so good. It’s what made Black Panther and Eternals great too—a resonant story about surviving the past and finding your place in the future. Evolving into what you want to be rather than letting the world decide you can’t. It’s a rebirth. Finally.

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Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Bob (Lewis Pullman), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian (David Harbour), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan)in Marvel Studios’ THUNDERBOLTS*. Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. © 2025 MARVEL.