Heading into the Super Bowl weekend, we were expecting Marvel to drop trailers for two of its three 2025 MCU movies. With Captain America: Brave New World opening on Friday, we were left with only two other options: Thunderbolts* and The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
However, Marvel made a big deal about the latter by launching The Fantastic Four first trailer a few days before the Big Game. That left Thunderbolts* as the only Marvel movie to hopefully get a Super Bowl trailer debut.
Marvel delivered the clip, which is the second trailer for the highly-anticipated Avengers-like crossover — and the new trailer is even better than the first teaser trailer. We’ve known since Kevin Feige & Co. announced Thunderbolts* that the film would be a version of Warner’s Suicide Squad.
A team of misfits will have to work together to defeat some sort of massive threat in Thunderbolts*. But what is this enormous threat the team of unlikely heroes will have to face? Until now, we haven’t really seen a good look at the Thunderbolts* villain, but the Big Game trailer finally shows the character you’ve been waiting to see.
This is where I warn you that big spoilers will follow after the trailer, so you’ll want to stop after watching the new Thunderbolts* clip if you don’t want spoilers.
Who is Bob?
The Super Bowl trailer recycles some of the footage we saw in the first teaser trailer but also offers plenty of new scenes that make me want to watch this MCU movie even more than I already did. I said a few weeks ago that Thunderbolts* is my top priority when it comes to Marvel movies this year, even though I want to see Captain America 4, and I’m excited to discover Marvel’s first Fantastic Four movie.
The new trailer finally explains why the Thunderbolts have to work together, which wasn’t exactly clear after the first one. Until the Super Bowl clip, all we knew about the Thunderbolts was that somebody wanted them dead. We did meet Bob (Lewis Pullman), the mysterious character Marvel added to the MCU via Thunderbolts.
If you’re familiar with the comics, you know that Bob becomes a Superman-like character in Marvel stories known as Sentry. But Bob has mental illness, which develops into a second super-powered being, The Void.
The Thunderbolts* Super Bowl trailer gives us a good look at Bob’s powers, and The Void is especially interesting to observe, given the powers he has. If you thought Thanos (Josh Brolin) and his turning-people-to-dust trick were impressive in Avengers: Infinity War, wait until you see The Void turning people into shadows.
The question now becomes something else: How can a team of characters with no real powers ever dream of beating The Void?
The trailer gives us scenes from battle sequences that show The Void beating the Thunderbolts. Just look at Bucky’s (Sebastian Stan) face when he realizes his arm is not enough to give him an advantage over Sentry/The Void. And yes, I’m worried Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) will be the Thunderbolts to die in the movie, considering how little we see of her in this clip.
I can’t talk about a new Thunderbolts* trailer without addressing the asterisk in the title. As a reminder, the Thunderbolts team might end up calling themselves the New Avengers by the end of the movie.
Defeating a scary villain like The Void is the way to earn that name, especially in a time when the Avengers do not exist. The villain reveal in the Super Bowl trailer only makes me more hopeful that the Thunderbolts will become an Avengers team before Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) raises his Avengers.
Finally, I’ll remind you that Marvel trailers are usually misleading. The Thunderbolts* Super Bowl clip probably falls in the same category. You might think you’re finally getting to see the film’s big villain when you look at The Void in action. But this is where I tell you we’ve seen the real villain since the first trailer. That’s Val (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), the scheming mastermind behind all of this. She is probably responsible for creating Sentry/The Void and needs the Thunderbolts to cover up her mistakes in a way that will also eliminate them.
Plot speculation aside, Thunderbolts* opens on May 2nd. We have plenty of time to see more clips before then, including a final trailer.
