Who Are the Thunderbolts*? — New MCU Team Explained

Careful who you assemble — especially when they all hate each other. Well, some might tolerate one another on a good day. Yet for the most part, the members of this ragtag super hero team can barely function individually, not to mention when forced to group up on missions. Somehow, however, the Thunderbolts make it work. Dysfunction is just part of their process. There are bad guys, and then there are worse guys. And they just might be the latter.

Then why assemble them? Who are the Thunderbolts and what’s up with their messy team dynamic? Learn more about the Thunderbolts below before their movie hits the big screen this spring.

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Winter Soldier, Yelena Belova, Red Guardian, Ghost, Taskmaster, and U.S. Agent are on the Thunderbolts team

“Everyone here has done bad things. Shadow ops. Robbing government labs. Contract kills.”

The Thunderbolts are basically an antihero militia sent on the CIA’s dirty jobs. They complete tasks that are a little unsavory, extremely dangerous, and that can only be accomplished by people with harsh backgrounds, super powers, or expendable roles in the world/government. The MCU lineup includes:

• Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier — Steve Rogers’ best friend and a 1940s war veteran who was held captive and tortured by the Russian government
• Yelena Belova/White Widow — Natasha Romanoff’s adopted younger sister and a product of the secretive Red Room training facility
• Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian — Natasha and Yelena’s adopted father, as well as the Soviet Union’s first official Super Soldier
• Ava Starr/Ghost — a reluctant S.H.I.E.L.D. stealth operative with the power to render herself intangible and generate extreme amounts of quantum power
• Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster — a trained assassin with the ability to mimic fighting techniques due to a control chip in her brain
• John Walker/U.S. Agent — second Captain America of the United States who was dishonorably discharged from his post after murdering a foreign national

Don’t forget founder Valentina Allegra de Fontaine!

Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine is the Thunderbolts founder. She is also a noblewoman and CIA director. Valentina first appeared in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, recruiting John Walker to her more secretive super soldier ranks. She’s since stirred up trouble across the MCU, including in Black Widow and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Now, Valentina’s assembled her own top secret boy band in Thunderbolts*.

Sentry’s role in Thunderbolts*

You may remember an unassuming stranger in the first Thunderbolts* trailer who calls himself Bob. Well, Bob is actually Robert Reynolds, AKA Sentry. Sentry saves the world but his ultra-evil alter ego The Void destroys everything. It’s hard to have both personas battling for dominance inside your brain. But Bob is in the right hands.

After all, all the other Thunderbolts members also struggle with mental illness, purpose, belonging, trauma, and guilt. Rather than fight against Sentry, perhaps these individuals will find ways to heal together. It’s like court-mandated therapy for the most broken of the semi-bad guys. While we’re at it, we should really get Frank Castle into the mix.

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The * in Thunderbolts means the team name is a work in progress

First, let’s break down the use of an asterisk as punctuation. In writing, we use the * symbol to signal either an annotation or omission in the text. Essentially, the asterisk highlights a secondary point or missing matter. So why use one in the Thunderbolts* movie title stylization?

It’s actually a small bit of comedic genius, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in the Thunderbolts* trailer. When Alexei screams the team name, Bucky immediately answers, “We can’t call ourselves that.” So disagreement on the name means they’re still workshopping it as a team. Hence, the asterisk.

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Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley made the Thunderbolts in 1997…

Peter David and Mike Deodato Jr. introduced the Thunderbolts in The Incredible Hulk #449 (1997). But the true introduction came a few months later. In Thunderbolts #1 (1997), a team initially shown as replacements to the Avengers were revealed as the Masters of Evil in disguise.

Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley safeguarded this secret for the team’s debut issue. Then, they impressed audiences with a lineup of moral degenerates and villains all under the command of Baron Helmut Zemo (disguised as Citizen V). The original Thunderbolts were: Goliath, Fixer, Screaming Mimi, The Beetle, and Moonstone. Of course, they all used heroic aliases instead before they were exposed, so they referred to themselves as: Atlas, Techno, Songbird, MACH-1, and Meteorite.

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But the Thunderbolts are different between Marvel Comics and the MCU

Later, Hawkeye took over Thunderbolts leadership. He actually persuaded the team to reject Baron Zemo’s ideals and evil schemes. Over the years, they added many members including lesser-known characters like Jolt, Cobalt Man (actually Tony Stark’s pseudonym when he infiltrated their ranks), and even Nighthawk. More prominent heroes/villains such as Luke Cage, Ghost Rider, Bullseye, and Green Goblin have also been part of the Thunderbolts. There have been 12 total variations of the Thunderbolts team.

No matter what, the Thunderbolts are always outcasts. They operate on the fringes of superheroism, often falling into the antihero or villain category. However, the on-screen team roster is the first time these “heroes” have worked together in any iteration of the Thunderbolts. As we mentioned above, the original Thunderbolts team was much different. There are also various rebrands of the team, including the Thunderbolts Red. Described as a “colorful cast of volatile killers,” Red Hulk, Elektra, Deadpool, Venom, and The Punisher directed that particular era of Thunderbolts shenanigans.

In July 2023, Marvel announced a Thunderbolts comics roster more closely aligned with its cinematic counterpart. The most modern lineup therefore consists of leaders Winter Soldier and Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine with a more espionage-focused group operating at their behest. These spies include Black Widow, Sharon Carter, White Widow, Red Guardian, and U.S. Agent.

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Now that you know all about the Thunderbolts, it’s time to catch them in action! The latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe premieres Friday, May 2 in theaters worldwide. Share your excitement and reactions to Thunderbolts* at side.show/geekgroup or in the Sideshow Social Network. And as always, don’t forget to Let Your Geek Sideshow!