Thunderbolts*(2025)

Submitted by Jeremy

Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) has found herself in a funk after committing to carrying out secret operations for Contessa Valentina de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). When Val is being impeached for her operations, she has Yelena, plus Ava Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), John Walker/U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), and Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) assigned to kill each other and get rid of any evidence that can implicate Val. Ava kills Taskmaster, but the others realize they have been set up, alongside a mysterious civilian named Robert “Bob” Reynolds (Lewis Pullman). The assassins reluctantly end up working together.

Once Val realizes that the team can either expose or kill her, she finds that Bob is the sole survivor of Project Sentry, which was designed to create a superhuman in the wake of the Avengers’ disbanding. Since Bob is mentally unstable, him becoming Sentry would become a major threat. Yelena, Walker, and Ava team up with Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) and Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian (David Harbour) as the Thunderbolts (working name) to stop Val and Sentry. However, he proves to be too powerful for all of them to take on. When he nearly kills Valentina, her assistant Mel stops Sentry with a killswitch, but this triggers his other alter ego, The Void, to come out and start to envelop New York City and its citizens in total darkness.

Yelena enters The Void and is haunted by painful memories until she is able to reach Bob. The other Thunderbolts enter and try to help Yelena intervene. They are able to calm Bob down and stop The Void from spreading, saving the city and its people. Before the Thunderbolts can kill or arrest Val, she spins the narrative to the public that it was her plan all along to introduce the team as the New Avengers. However, this also means that the team can choose to expose Val if she crosses them again.

As the New Avengers adjust to their new roles, they learn of a space crisis and spot a spacecraft entering into Earth’s orbit, one with a large 4 painted on the side…