Thunderbolts: Shaping the Future of MCU Collaborations

You might find yourself either amused or frustrated by the playful asterisk at the end of Thunderbolts*. Regardless of your reaction, it’s evident that Marvel intended for it to spark curiosity. The film addresses these intrigues through a surprisingly enjoyable updated title card that appears as the movie concludes.

However, that card brings its own set of lingering questions, especially regarding future MCU collaborations and their comic counterparts. We’re here to explore those.

[Ed. note: This article contains spoilers for Thunderbolts*.]

If you’ve seen Thunderbolts*, you’re aware that the asterisk sets up the film’s final joke: The makeshift team humorously dubbed “Thunderbolts” is a nod to the inept pee-wee soccer team Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) played on as a child. By the film’s conclusion, though, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) has rebranded them as the New Avengers, culminating in a visual gag where the Thunderbolts* title card is torn away to expose a New Avengers title. Unfortunately for comic fans, “New Avengers” is among the most perplexing team names Marvel could have chosen. Let’s break it down.

According to the Thunderbolts* post-credits scene, it seems that “New Avengers” is the name given to this new superhero group in the MCU, consisting of Yelena, Bucky (Sebastian Stan), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Red Guardian (David Harbour), Bob (Lewis Pullman), and U.S. Soldier (Wyatt Russell). In contrast, in the comics, The New Avengers was a distinct comic series that ran intermittently from 2005 to 2017, showcasing various alternate iterations of the Avengers, starting with a lineup of Luke Cage, Captain America, Spider-Man, and a secretly-a-Skrull Spider-Woman.

Interestingly, no version of the Avengers in these comics referred to themselves as the New Avengers, in contrast to the Thunderbolts* team, which appears to have officially claimed the title. This suggests that the MCU is borrowing the name from Marvel Comics while not necessarily adhering to any existing storylines from those comics.

Things become even more convoluted: In the comics, the Thunderbolts eventually evolve into the Dark Avengers. This team, created and led by Norman Osborn, was composed mainly of supervillains masquerading as well-known heroes. Many, including Polygon, speculated that the asterisk in Thunderbolts* hinted that this group would reveal themselves as the Dark Avengers within the movie. While that remains a possibility for the MCU’s future, it’s not the outcome we see by the film’s end.

Additionally, the finale of Thunderbolts* reveals that Sam