Thunderbolts* (2025) – Review
An Honest Look At Marvel’s More Tragic Characters
Thunderbolts isn’t an action-packed superhero flick simply existing to further the story of the MCU. It’s a fresh new chapter that gives Marvel’s most unfortunate and saddest characters a chance at redemption.
Jake Schrier’s closing film to Phase Five brings together a team of lightly redeemed villainous rejects, pulling them out of the darkness into the light to face off against CIA Director Vallentina Allegra De Fontaine (Julie Louis Dryfus). While defeating their former boss is tough, and being a team is practically impossible, it’s the darkness inside each of them that will challenge them the most.
Thunderbolts occurs shortly after the events of Captain America: Brave New World (and at an uncertain point before or shortly after Daredevil: Born Again). De Fontaine is under investigation by Congress when a corporation she’s worked for is being investigated for illegal human trials.
With her assets in the field a liability, De Fontaine lures Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) into a trap where they will take each other out. As the group fights, they realize that one of them isn’t supposed to be there—Bob (Lewis Pullman)—and they realize that they’ve been set up.
After a miraculous escape managed mostly by luck, the unlikely team must work together with Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) and Red Guardian (David Harbour) to take down their former boss. A dysfunctional group of super soldiers, assassins, and former spies, they aren’t superhero material at all, and they know it—but along the way, they may just find that they carry with them more than their individual darkness.
They may find a light – and the chance to prove they aren’t losers.
A Unique Take On Former Marvel Villains
This film starts off dark, literally. We are bathed in darkness – dark lighting, dark setting, dark monologue from Pugh as she notes her character’s mental fugue from overworking herself into exhaustion. It’s clear from the get-go that Schrier understands that these characters aren’t heroes in the traditional sense – they’re screw-ups.
What’s great about the MCU, which sometimes acts as a hindrance, but in this case helps the film, is that most of the characters have already been established. They’ve appeared at various points across the MCU timeline, so audiences, particularly those who are big fans of Marvel, don’t have to spend ages getting to know them.
It also helps that, having that prior work, the actors know how to step into their characters’ shoes and fill them with all the pain, grief, and anger that comes across on screen so well. It might seem frustrating that we spend so much time watching these characters express themselves and learn their dynamics as a group rather than as individuals.
But it’s time well spent. By the time we transition from Act 2 to Act 3 and the conclusion, I’m fully invested in this ‘team of anti-heroes.’ People who have only ever been told they were the bad guys now get a chance to be good and redeem themselves beyond their two-minute redemption act at the end of whatever their last film or TV appearance was.
A Growth In A Maturity
Thunderbolts* sometimes feels like a movement outside of the MCU, but it knows how to tie together the larger universe at play. The moments of Marvelesque humor are a little less frequent, but when utilized, they are executed so well.
Walker’s snide comments, Guardian’s over enthusiasm and exaggerated personality, Ghosts snapping at bites, Yelena’s dark humour. They all exist, but they exist as if they were real people. Each part of the front that these characters put up hides their damaged selves away from the world.
And as with each previous iteration of Marvel projects, we’ve received a glimpse of what’s ahead. Let me tell you, the future looks fantastically bright, and I’m more hyped than ever. If this is how Marvel is moving forward, then all aboard the train! I’m ready to rock these tracks with speed—because I can’t wait to reach our destination.
- Thunderbolts* (2025) – Review
Thunderbolts isn’t an action-packed superhero flick simply existing to further the story of the MCU. It’s a fresh new chapter that gives Marvel’s most unfortunate and saddest characters a chance at redemption
Super-humans With Real Problems
When this film steps outside the typical themes of the MCU, it serves as a vehicle for commentary on a much broader issue—depression. Symptomatically, many of us have likely felt it at some point. Many of us suffer from burnout, alcoholism, doom-scrolling, and social media scrolling through pages of criticism of our character.
As a society we dwell on our mistakes and bask in our former joys, sharing old photos and videos of times when we were happy in the hope of recapturing that past. But the past is prologue, and what’s ahead doesn’t have to be more of the same misery. That’s the promise that the Thunderbolts bring when they come together.
There’s a power in standing together and facing our demons, reconciling our past with the potential future ahead of us. Surviving our pain by sharing it. This hits heavy and it resonates well. We can’t change yesterday, but today and tomorrow we can succeed where once we would have failed.
None of this team is perfect, but together they can heal each other. As Yelena reaches out to Bob, she also empowers the rest of these anti-heroes, asking for help and taking that first step… together.
Too Much To Watch
If I had a criticism of the film, it would be this: as a longtime fan of the MCU, I am incredibly familiar with all the ins and outs. I’ve seen all the various media—Daredevil, She-Hulk, even Agents of Shield. Not everyone going in will have seen these projects, so there may be some disconnect for those fans.
Pugh’s character, for instance, made her debut in 2021’s Black Widow, which—due to Covid—premiered on Disney Plus. She later made her second appearance in Hawkeye (2021), a TV series that introduced Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop as the younger Hawkeye. Russell John Walker also first appeared in TV form, taking up the reins of Captain America following the death of Steve Rogers in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier (2021).
There’s a lot of media within the MCU to consume, and even more is being added all the time, especially with the multiverse saga canonizing Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man trilogy and Andrew Garfield’s Amazing Spider-Man films. Also, with the acquisition of Fox, all the X-Men films are now canon in the MCU, along with The Fantastic Four (soon to make their official MCU debut on June 25th).
It can sometimes feel overwhelming, but if you invest your time in it—and are relatively content with both extremely high and extremely low expectations regarding the sudden tics and dips in the quality of this franchise—it can pay off.
Conclusion
Thunderbolts isn’t an action-packed superhero flick simply existing to further the story of the MCU. It’s a fantastic film which delves into characters the MCU usually has to leave behind, bringing them forward as part of the next generation of characters and establishing that the MCU is here to stay.
Score – 9 out of 10.
