50 Fun Facts About Thunderbolts*

Who plays Yelena Belova, the lead of Thunderbolts*?

Florence Pugh insisted on doing Yelena's leap off the world's second-tallest building herself, emailing Kevin Feige until Marvel dropped its insurance objections.

What elected office does Bucky Barnes hold in Thunderbolts*?

US Congressman: Bucky was first written as a kind of lobbyist whom politicians used for propaganda, until Kevin Feige suggested putting him in the House instead.

Who plays Valentina Allegra de Fontaine in Thunderbolts*?

Julia Louis-Dreyfus says Valentina's great weakness is her dread of losing power: she doesn't realise that she hasn't really got it, or that she doesn't need it.

What does the asterisk in Thunderbolts* turn out to mean?

The team is rebranded the New Avengers: the director pitched the asterisk as a note meaning 'until we come up with something better', and Marvel's marketing switched names after opening weekend.

In which city does Thunderbolts* open, with Yelena destroying a laboratory?

Kuala Lumpur: Yelena blows up the lab to erase evidence of Project Sentry, and the film's final confrontation returns to a recreation of that same lab.

What position does Valentina Allegra de Fontaine hold in Thunderbolts*?

Head of the CIA: facing impeachment, she tries to save her job by unveiling a superpowered protector of her own to the press.

In Thunderbolts*, which corporation is behind Project Sentry?

The O.X.E. Group: Valentina sends her own operatives to one of its vaults with orders to kill each other, planning to incinerate the survivors along with the evidence.

Which character is killed early in Thunderbolts*, inside Valentina's death trap?

Antonia Dreykov, Taskmaster, is killed by Ghost within minutes. In the writer's original draft she survived to the end and bonded with Ghost, and the change shocked him at the first cut.

Who plays Bob Reynolds, the amnesiac found in a pod in Thunderbolts*?

Lewis Pullman asked whether Bob could be renamed Robert, having just played a Bob in Top Gun: Maverick; the director said the comics name had to stay, and Pullman grew to love it.

Which Thunderbolts* character hopes the team will end up on a Wheaties box?

Red Guardian voices the hope in the film's Super Bowl trailer; Marvel answered with a poster styled as a Wheaties box, and by release day the cereal was selling a real limited-edition box with the team on it.

What has the former Avengers Tower been renamed in Thunderbolts*?

The Watchtower: Valentina turns out to be the buyer of the building Tony Stark sold in Spider-Man: Homecoming, picked by the director as the person you'd least like to own it.

In Thunderbolts*, where does the name 'Thunderbolts' come from?

Yelena's childhood soccer team, which never won a game: a teammate brings it up as a sarcastic jab, and Alexei proudly mistakes it for the group's official name.

What job is Alexei Shostakov doing in Thunderbolts* when he overhears Valentina's plot?

Freelance chauffeur: at the wheel of his limo he overhears where Valentina is heading, then races there and picks up Yelena's group before her strike team can finish them.

Who is Mel, played by Geraldine Viswanathan in Thunderbolts*?

Valentina's assistant: Mel says she was still in high school when the Avengers first assembled, and in the film she goes behind her boss's back to contact Bucky Barnes.

Which villain did the Thunderbolts* writer want at first, before Marvel kept him for Captain America: Brave New World?

Red Hulk: writer Eric Pearson asked for him as the villain and Marvel said no, because Thaddeus Ross's transformation was already promised to the Captain America film.

In Thunderbolts*, what triggers the emergence of the Void?

Mel using a failsafe kill switch on Bob stops him as he turns on Valentina, but his body blackens and he rises again as the Void, the embodiment of his depression.

What does the Void do to New Yorkers in Thunderbolts*?

Traps them in visions of their traumatic memories. Yelena realises the only way to stop it is from the inside, and walks into the darkness on purpose.

Where does Yelena find Bob hiding inside the Void in Thunderbolts*?

A recreation of his childhood bedroom, where Bob hid from his abusive father as a boy; Yelena urges him to face his pain, as she has, rather than stay hidden.

How is the Void finally defeated in Thunderbolts*?

The team hugs Bob and affirms their belief in him. The writer always wanted the fight to end with a hug, not a beating: when Bob attacks the Void himself, it starts to consume him.

What nickname did the Thunderbolts* filmmakers give the spaces inside the Void?

Shame rooms: executive producer Brian Chapek suggested Sentry could only be beaten from inside the Void, and the rooms were staged as practical, in-camera sets rather than visual effects.

The Thunderbolts* director likened his film to which Pixar sequel, asking if the team can 'get out of the trash can together'?

Toy Story 3: he meant its furnace scene, which works, he said, because you have come to care so much about the characters, a thrown-together team facing obsolescence like his own.

In the Thunderbolts* post-credits scene, who is in a legal dispute with the team?

Sam Wilson was asked to build a team of his own in Captain America: Brave New World, so by this scene, set fourteen months after the main story, two rival squads exist.

What arrives at the end of the Thunderbolts* post-credits scene?

A spacecraft with a large '4' on it: the Fantastic Four's ship, from another universe. A cut gag had Bucky and Walker trade 'What's the number for?' lines like a 'Who's on First?' routine.

Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier brought writer Lee Sung Jin and other crew over from which Netflix series?

Beef: its creator Lee Sung Jin rewrote the script at the director's request, and the team saw the film as a chance to explore the show's ideas about mental health on a far bigger scale.

Before Sentry was added to Thunderbolts*, which character was written as the main antagonist?

John Walker: Valentina was to tell him his powers were fading and keep him going on medication, secretly turning him into a time bomb the team would have to talk down.

Which swamp creature did director Jake Schreier consider adding to the Thunderbolts* team while pitching the film?

Man-Thing: the writer said a swamp monster would have pulled the audience's eyes away from Bob, and a Marvel Halloween special ended up using the creature first.

What was the working title of Thunderbolts*, borrowed from a Cap'n Crunch cereal variety?

Oops All Berries is Cap'n Crunch with only the berry-flavoured pieces. The cover name fooled few: it turned up on state film-office paperwork, and reporters matched it to the Marvel film.

In which US state did Thunderbolts* shoot its remote outdoor locations?

Utah: the producers wanted a landscape audiences hadn't seen on film for one of the story's key sequences, the remote vault where the team first meets.

Which actor was first cast as Sentry in Thunderbolts* but left when the strikes delayed the shoot?

Steven Yeun had worked with the director before. He said the delays pulled him out of it, that it took many email drafts to say how sorry he was, and that he still wants to do a Marvel film.

Which actress asked for her executive producer credit on Thunderbolts* to be removed because she had no involvement?

Scarlett Johansson was listed on the first teaser. When a former co-star congratulated her on the credit in a magazine chat, she replied that she'd asked to have it removed because she wasn't involved.

Son Lux, who scored Thunderbolts*, earned an Oscar nomination for the music of which 2022 film?

Everything Everywhere All at Once: the Marvel job was a reunion, since Son Lux's Ryan Lott had scored the director's 2015 film Paper Towns, and the band recorded it at Abbey Road.

A March 2025 Thunderbolts* trailer was cut in the style of which indie studio's marketing?

A24: to sell the film as more than a standard superhero movie, the trailer swapped action for techno music and title cards listing the cast and crew's credits on the studio's films.

Thunderbolts* was the final film of which MCU era?

Phase Five was meant to end in July 2024, but the strikes pushed the film into 2025, where it swapped dates with the next Marvel release and opened on May 2.

In which city did Thunderbolts* hold its European premiere, six days before its Los Angeles one?

London: the cast walked the carpet at Cineworld Leicester Square on 22 April 2025, the same night Marvel ran early fan screenings in ten American cities.

Kevin Feige blamed the weak Thunderbolts* box office on viewers thinking they first had to do what?

Watch Marvel's Disney+ series: Feige said the flood of streaming shows had made Marvel feel like homework, and he still called the film 'very, very good'.

Who plays Alexei Shostakov, the Red Guardian, in Thunderbolts*?

David Harbour walked into the film's Comic-Con panel in full Red Guardian costume, then played mortified that none of his co-stars had dressed up too.

Yelena Belova first appeared in which 2021 Marvel film?

Black Widow: its post-credits scene already showed Valentina sending Yelena after Hawkeye, which set fans guessing that she was recruiting a team of her own.

Thunderbolts* modelled the Void's fall-through-the-closet transitions on which 1999 cult film?

Being John Malkovich: the writer had pictured the Void as dreamy and ethereal, but the director wanted solid, physical spaces you fall between, which the writer found more unsettling.

The Thunderbolts* writer called Yelena the film's version of which Godfather character, with Bucky as her Tom Hagen?

Michael Corleone: Eric Pearson saw Yelena as a natural leader, one head of the family where the Avengers had been built around the double act of Tony Stark and Captain America.

Sebastian Stan compared Bucky's arrival among the Thunderbolts to the plot of which Jack Nicholson film?

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Stan described Bucky as 'a guy coming into this group that was chaotic and degenerate, and somehow finding a way to unite them'.

Director Jake Schreier said which real historical images inspired the look of the Void in Thunderbolts*?

The shadows left after the Hiroshima bombing: he said the Void's design 'definitely came from images from Hiroshima', and he mapped Bob's struggle on a close friend's depression.

Hannah John-Kamen's Ghost first appeared as the antagonist of which Marvel film?

Ant-Man and the Wasp: there Ghost was flickering out of control and in pain, whereas John-Kamen says the Thunderbolts* version has mastered her powers and carries a new calm.

Which actress was first cast as Mel in Thunderbolts*, before Geraldine Viswanathan took the role?

Ayo Edebiri joined in January 2023, but the strikes pushed the shoot into 2024 and the new dates clashed with her schedule, so she had to step aside.

Which director floated a Thunderbolts film around 2014, then lost interest after making a team film for DC?

James Gunn raised the idea with Kevin Feige on the Guardians of the Galaxy set, but said years later that The Suicide Squad, DC's own band of villains, had scratched that itch.

Which Marvel scientist, a father figure to Ghost, was written into early Thunderbolts* drafts and then cut?

Bill Foster: the writer paired him with Alexei as two old men 'acting as fathers', and thinks he was dropped because he lacked the background trauma that unites the others.

Which Pixies song plays over the first official Thunderbolts* trailer?

Where Is My Mind? The Pixies' 1988 song ran under Marvel's first official trailer, which the studio put out about a month after a rougher cut of the footage leaked online.

Who directed the Thunderbolts* post-credits scene, shot on another film's set about a month before release?

The Russo brothers shot it on the set of Avengers: Doomsday, the film it was really made for, while the Thunderbolts* director stood by and watched.

Which film-fan platform debuted an arthouse-style Thunderbolts* trailer in March 2025?

Letterboxd: the teaser was cut 'with film buffs in mind', as one critic put it, so Marvel gave the film-diary app an exclusive first look before it ran in selected cinemas.

Marvel's March 2025 cast reveal for its next crossover film was accused of spoiling what about Thunderbolts*?

Which characters survive: a livestream of cast chairs named most of the team's actors weeks before release, though one critic countered that in a multiverse story a returning actor proves nothing.

Thunderbolts* writer Eric Pearson earlier co-wrote which Thor film?

Thor: Ragnarok. Pearson took the Thunderbolts* idea to Marvel himself: his first pitch failed, and the second, with Yelena uniting the team against Valentina, came close to the finished film.