At San Diego Comic-Con 2022, Marvel Studios announced that Phase 5 of the MCU would end with the Thunderbolts, bringing together a unique team of heroes and anti-heroes to make their mark. Bringing together Paper Towns director Jake Schreier and Black Widow lead writer Eric Pearson to develop this new team-up outing, Marvel has a chance to explore something the MCU has created through this dark group of fighters. Have never seen it before.

Marvel took the opportunity to confirm the characters for the MCU at the 2022 D23 Fan Expo, which will include the core team in Thunderbolt after being established in other entries over the years. 2021's The Falcon and the Winter Soldier introduces the potential leader of the team in Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, though a trio of other films from the past decade brought the rest of the group's powerful players into the fold.

In the comics, this team is usually led by classic supervillain Baron Zemo, which also includes interesting characters such as Hawkeye and Luke Cage. But now, as the MCU has done many times before, Thunderbolts will introduce movie fans to a team that hasn't been used in any media adaptations before.

MCU Bringing New Version of Thunderbolts

Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige announced the MCU characters that will team up in 2024's Thunderbolts, During Marvel Studios' presentation at the 2022 D23 Fan Expo. The roster includes the following, as shown in left-to-right order from the concept art released at the event:

Val (Julia Louis-Dreyfus)

Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen)

Red Guardian (David Harbour)

Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh)

Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan)

U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell)

Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko)

This team is different from any version of the group that has appeared on the pages before, Looking at the Thunderbolts' history in the comics. Although they have all been Thunderbolt's members in previous stories, this specific group will be seen together for the first time in the 2024 movie.

The most popular version was led by Baron Zero, which later turned out to be the Masters of Evil. This group featured Goliath, Moonstone, Fixer, Beetle, and Screaming Mimi, none of whom are confirmed to appear in Thunderbolts yet.

How Will Marvel Studios Utilize the Thunderbolts?

The MCU has always only been based on the stories from Marvel Comics instead of replicating them exactly, it’s no surprise that Phase 5’s final movie is diverting so drastically from its source material.

One very big difference comes right at the top, as it will seemingly be Val leading the team while Daniel Brühl’s Helmut Zemo is still locked up in the Raft after The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Whether Zemo comes back for any kind of role later is a secret, although Val’s mention of his breakout in the final episode of their show together seems to indicate that he’s of interest to her in an unknown capacity.

Additionally, this will be the first time any version of the Thunderbolts has used the team leader Yelena Belova, a role more often reserved for characters like the U.S. Agent or Baron Zemo. Considering Yelena's popularity with fans and the way she's already gone after Clint Barton following Natasha Romanoff's death, she's shown that she has what it takes to lead anyone on this team and make sure that their missions are accomplished.

This team may also be influenced by Thunderbolt Ross, which could match what happened in the comics or divert away from the idea depending on where Marvel decides to go in terms of naming the team in the movie. With William Hurt's unfortunate passing, the franchise could use his General Ross as a way to inspire the team name if he passes away in the story, although nothing is confirmed on that front yet.

While Marvel could surely introduce more of the original Thunderbolts characters later in the MCU timeline, the team right now consists of heroes and anti-heroes that are already established and ready for new challenges. The team is also sure to evolve long after their solo movie with the Multiverse Saga being only the next step in Marvel's huge narrative.

Thunderbolts will debut in theatres on July 26, 2024.

WHO ARE THE THUNDERBOLTS IN MARVEL COMICS?

There have been many, many different incarnations of the Thunderbolts in Marvel Comics canon — but the team started as a bait and switch. Writer Kurt Busiek and artist Mark Bagley created them for The Incredible Hulk in 1997 (a whole decade after the modern incarnation of the Suicide Squad, so don’t get it twisted), as a new superhero team attempting to fill the hole left by the Avengers’ absence.

Where were the Avengers at the time? Well, an evil psychic being born from Professor X’s suppressed thoughts of — you know what? Don’t worry about it.

The twist was that the Thunderbolts were actually the Masters of Evil in disguise, trying to flimflam their way to power and fame by pretending to be superheroes, under the hidden leadership of a second-generation Nazi: Baron Helmut Zemo. Eventually, the “heroes” of the group kicked Zemo out of it and tried going straight for a while before their story petered out — but the idea of a superhero team made of supervillains is just too good a toy to leave in the proverbial toybox.

Sometimes, the Thunderbolts are working to redeem themselves, and sometimes they’re just working for corrupt government leaders. Some members have even been heroes — usually the ones with bad guy pasts — like Hawkeye, Black Widow, Elektra, and Ant-Man. There’s no traditional Thunderbolts lineup, and no tradition of characters dying more frequently than other series’, as with the Suicide Squad. Many, many, many Marvel characters have done a stint on the Thunderbolts, from Abomination to Zaran.

WHO ARE THE THUNDERBOLTS IN THE MCU?

Marvel Studios revealed the full character lineup in its panel at D23 2022. Led by the mysterious and unscrupulous Valentina Fontaine, the team will comprise Ghost, Red Guardian, Yelena Belova, the Winter Soldier, US Agent, and Taskmaster.

GHOST

Ghost, aka Ava Star, featured as the villain in 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp. Hannah John-Kamen played a woman who was accidentally given the power to phase through solid matter in a childhood science accident, she worked as a covert SHIELD operative in hopes of getting help finding a cure to her body’s slow dematerialization. When she discovered Hydra’s infiltration of SHIELD, she defected and turned to crime in desperation, finding her goals at cross-purposes with Scott Lang’s. By the end of the movie, she was alive and free, and her condition had been temporarily stabilized.

RED GUARDIAN

Alexei Shostakov, played by David Harbour in Black Widow, is one of Russia’s attempts to recreate the US super soldier treatment that created Captain America. He is something of a flawed father figure to Natasha Romanoff and Yelena Belova after the time they spent in deep cover as an American family. At the close of Black Widow, he was on the run from authorities alongside the rest of Russia’s Red Room Black Widows, who had been freed from mind control.

TASKMASTER

In the comics, Taskmaster is a mercenary who can memorize and replicate the physical skills of anyone he observes, a trick he used often to take on the Avengers in their own fighting styles. In the MCU, Taskmaster is all that, but also a brainwashed little girl raised to be an unstoppable assassin with the help of a computer chip in her brain. Introduced in Black Widow, at the end of the movie, Antonia Dreykov’s brainwashing had been broken and she escaped along with Red Guardian and the other Black Widows.

YELENA BELOVA

Yelena, as mentioned, considers Black Widow and Red Guardian her family. A younger recruit to Russia’s Black Widow program, she defected and escaped mind control in Black Widow and then sought out the man she thought had killed her sister in Hawkeye. The series ended with her discovering the truth — that Clint Barton was innocent — and fading back into the shadows after having a lot of very flirty conversations with Kate Bishop.