Captain America: Brave New World came out last month as only the first of three movies that Marvel will be releasing this year. Next up is Thunderbolts' which is scheduled to be released May 2nd and will mark the final installment of Phase 5 for the MCU. Contrary to what audiences believed about Brave New World, it'll be the outlier starring Florence Pugh and Sebastian Stan that kicks off the next phase of the comic-book-centric universe. Brave New World simply closed out Phase 4.
Thunderbolts' is going to be an interesting movie as it brings together a huge cast of characters who have already appeared in various MCU projects. If you watch the trailer, or the recent Super Bowl ad, you’re likely to see some familiar characters. But for those who haven’t been keeping litigious track of every character in the MCU, it might be helpful to have a quick refresher on when we last saw each member of the newly formed Thunderbolts group.
Warning: This list will have very small spoilers for Captain America: Brave New World.
Yelena Belova
Portrayed by Florence Pugh, Yelena is the adopted sister of Natasha Romanoff, and was trained as an assassin in the Red Room. We got a large part of her backstory in the Black Widow film, but the last time we saw her in the MCU was in the Hawkeye television series where she was trying to avenge her sister's death by killing Clint Barton. By the end of the series, she had accepted that Natasha’s death was not Clint’s fault, and has started to move forward, which is where we’ll pick up with her here.
Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier
Bucky has quietly become one of the most frequent characters to appear in the MCU. Since he first appeared in 2011, Bucky has gone on to appear in eight MCU films as well as a Disney+ series. He’s been a hero, a villain, and pretty much every shade of gray in between, so it’s no surprise that he’ll be showing up in the next Marvel movie. His latest appearance was actually a very brief scene in Captain America: Brave New World, where he had a conversation with Sam Wilson. The interesting bit of information we leared was that Bucky seems to be running for congress, something that was only briefly mentioned, but may plan a greater importance in the plot for Thunderbolts*
Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian
Played by David Harbour, Red Guardian has so far only appeared in the Black Widow movie. He was the father figure in the constructed family with Natasha and Yelena as he daughters. We last saw him at the end of Black Widow saying goodbye to Natsha after successfully taking down the Red Room, but we don’t know what has happened to him since then.
John Walker/U.S. Agent
When Steve Rogers retired from being Captain America and Sam Wilson was initially hesitant about taking up the title, the US saw an opportunity to swoop in and appoint a new, government-approved Captain America to take on the role. Walker was unable to live up to the title and when Sam eventually took on the mantle of Captain America at the end of The Falcon and Winter Soldier, that left Walker as a renegade vigilante. We last saw him stripped of the title, not long before getting redubbed as U.S. Agent by Val, who clearly had bigger plans for him.
Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster
Taskmaster is the third member of the Thunderbolts to come from the Black Widow movie. The villain of that movie, she was freed by the end and departed with Red Guardian and Yelena. With so many members of the group having been last seen in Black Widow, it’s looking like this movie might be a sort of quasi-sequel to that MCU entry. While these characters were together at the end of Black Widow, based on the trailers for Thunderbolts*, it seems that they’ve spent at least some time apart since the end of that movie. Mind you, audiences don’t know what has happened to them during that period of time.
Ava Starr/Ghost
Like Taskmaster, Ghost is one of the few female villains to have appeared in an MCU property, with her only film so far being Ant-Man and The Wasp back in 2018. In the movie, we learn that Ava Starr was caught in a science accident that destabilized her molecules making her unable to interact with the world. She was recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D., and given a suit to help her have some control over her powers, but she would need energy from the Quantum Realm to try and permanently fix her condition, which put her in an Ant-Man story. When we last saw her, Janet van Dyne, freshly returned from the Quantum Realm, was able to give her some of her energy to help stabilize her, but it was clear at the end of the film that this was something of a temporary solution, and more healing particles would need to be acquired, which is what Ant-Man was doing in the Quantum Realm when The Snap took place. Ghost’s current status is currently unknown.
Valentina Allegra de Fontaine
Played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Valentina (or Val) has been popping up in a few different places across the MCU, appearing in Black Widow and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, as well as in the series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Val appears to be the Nick Fury of the Thunderbolts and has been working for some time to put this group together. In at least some of her earlier appearances, we have seen her meeting with other people on this list, which were some of the earliest bits of setup for this movie.
Bob/Sentry/Void
For an actor who has three roles ahead of him, Lewis Pullman has quite the task ahead of him. He's portraying the unassuming Bob in The Thunderbolts' movie, as well as his superhero counterpart, Sentry. The kicker is that Sentry has a dark alter-ego called The Void, which Pullman will presumably have to embody as well. It'll be interesting to see how the actor goes about it because characters with multiple personas in Marvel properties tend to possess compelling storylines.
Oddly enough, this is Bob's first appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Perhaps his origins will reveal that he was kept at a facility related to one from the comics. Or maybe Bob was at Camp Echo One alongside Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson). That would inadvertently place him alongside Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) in the latest Captain America flick, in an uncredited way.
The Thunderbolts' opens in theaters on May 2, 2025.