It’s been just a rumor for a long time that Marvel will make a Thunderbolts crossover movie that will deliver a new Avengers-like team to the MCU. But Marvel only confirmed the Thunderbolts project a few weeks ago at Comic-Con 2022 without revealing any of the Thunderbolts team members.
The crossover will be the final title of MCU Phase 5, hitting theaters on July 6th, 2024. With that timeline in mind, Marvel will have to start shooting the movie at some point next year. Therefore, Kevin Feige & Co. will soon have to reveal the entire cast of this Suicide Squad-like movie. But before that happens, we already have a leak that mentions some of the superheroes and anti-heroes who might be on the team.
If you’ve watched the MCU Phase 4, you probably have candidates in mind for the Thunderbolts team. But, even so, some spoilers might follow below so stop reading now if you want to avoid them.
The early candidates
We were expecting to see some sort of Thunderbolts Easter eggs in Black Widow, the first movie of Phase 4. According to some leaks, Thunderbolt Ross (William Hurt) should have been the team’s founder. But that never happened. And Hurt has sadly passed away since then. There are rumors Harrison Ford may be the next Ross.
What we did get, however, are two potential Thunderbolts members: Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko).
As a reminder, the Thunderbolts team will include mostly former villains and anti-heroes. They’re criminals who need redemption. There also might be a few superheroes who lost their way.
Then The Falcon and the Winter Soldier gave us additional prospects. Zemo (Daniel Brühl) is the obvious choice. Then we have US Agent (Wyatt Russell), who should be on that list. And Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) might be a recognized Avenger, but he could also help the Thunderbolts at some point down the line.
Let’s not forget that Falcon and Black Widow gave us Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Val. She certainly seems like the kind of Fury-like character to lead the Thunderbolts. And she might have already begun recruiting some the team members.
Then there’s the puzzling Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp). She has no superpowers, but she has been running a long con in the MCU.
Add Echo (Alaqua Cox) from Hawkeye and Abomination (Tim Roth) from She-Hulk, and you end up with plenty of candidates for the Thunderbolts cast. Even the MCU’s Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) might have to join the team, given what he did as Ronin after Infinity War.
Thunderbolts team members start leaking
That said, not all of the cast Thunderbolts members should be as prominent or beloved as some of the characters mentioned above. Remember what happened with most of the team members in the Suicide Squad movies. We had villains and anti-heroes we were meant to love. And we also had cannon fodder. We should expect the same thing from the Thunderbolts roster.
John Walker (Wyatt Russell) in Marvel Studios’ The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Image source: Marvel Studios
All of that is just speculation at this time. But we have a leak that may give us an idea of what sort of Thunderbolts team members we should expect. The leak comes from Reddit, and lists many of the characters we’ve already discussed.
We’ve added explanations after each purported member, as the list contains both character names, superhero names, and actor names:
- Florence Pugh – she plays Yelena Belova, a breakout star of Black Widow and Hawkeye
- Anthony Ramos – he is rumored to play the Ironheart villain, The Hood
- Julia Louis-Dreyfus – she plays Val in Black Widow and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
- Abomination is possible – Tim Roth played the character in The Incredible Hulk and She-Hulk
- The Punisher is possible – Jon Bernthal played The Punisher in the non-MCU Netflix shows
- Wyatt Russel is possible – he played John Walker/US Agent in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
- Songbird not on the team – the character did not appear in the MCU
- Zemo’s status is unknown – Zemo does not need any more introductions; his dance is enough
In other words, the Thunderbolts members seem obvious to any Marvel fan who has seen everything in the MCU so far. We’ll just have to wait and see who Marvel picks for the team. And we don’t know if Captain America will show up in the movie either.
More Marvel coverage: For more MCU news, visit our Marvel guide.
