Should the “Thunderbolts” name & concept live on with other characters/villains, and become more than just a temporary name for the New Avengers? — Here’s a fun little conceptual poster I put together
With the Thunderbolts movie ending with the team taking on the New Avengers name, I was wondering how the Thunderbolts name/brand could live on in future films.
I really love the film, the comics and the concept of having a team of morally ambiguous anti-heroes and the story of redemption that comes with it. I also feel like there’s so many cool past/current MCU villains that have the potential to return and continue to evolve through a story like this.
One of the ideas I thought of is that the success of the first team birthed a government funded rehabilitation program where villains, mercenaries, prisoners can reform themselves with a promise of gaining a spot on the Avengers. I just put together a roster of characters I thought sort of fit the gig, and were at one point apart of the Thunderbolts in the comics. Not super firm on the lineup, but just using them for conceptual purposes. The team includes:
- **Baron Zemo**
- **Bullseye**
- **Songbird** (Mel)
- **Abomination**
- **The Hood**
- **Agent 13/Sharon Carter** (I just really wanted to have another woman on the team. Though, I played around with the idea of Titania from *She-Hulk* as well)
I really love the film, the comics and the concept of having a team of morally ambiguous anti-heroes and the story of redemption that comes with it. I also feel like there’s so many cool past/current MCU villains that have the potential to return and continue to evolve through a story like this.
One of the ideas I thought of is that the success of the first team birthed a government funded rehabilitation program where villains, mercenaries, prisoners can reform themselves with a promise of gaining a spot on the Avengers. I just put together a roster of characters I thought sort of fit the gig, and were at one point apart of the Thunderbolts in the comics. Not super firm on the lineup, but just using them for conceptual purposes. The team includes:
- **Baron Zemo**
- **Bullseye**
- **Songbird** (Mel)
- **Abomination**
- **The Hood**
- **Agent 13/Sharon Carter** (I just really wanted to have another woman on the team. Though, I played around with the idea of Titania from *She-Hulk* as well)
Commentaires
The MCU has neither properly established characters from the classic lineup nor built up a decent catalog of villains to pull from since so many of them are killed after their first appearance.
It's certainly doable, but it would take a bit of legwork.
The point is, though, that you need a team of established villains for the ones with redemption arcs to have compelling stories.
Baron Zemo
Abomination
Diamondback from Luke Cage
Bullseye
Sharon Carter
Mac Gargan but Sony probably wouldn't play ball
Shocker but again Sony
Leader
Baron Mordo
Elektra if she's still kicking.
And that’s without dipping into Agents of Shield in which case you can get
Snowflake
Blizzard
Deathlok with an undercover angle
If Deadpool comes to the MCU, you could even throw him in there. You can make a team here, it just takes a couple lines of exposition to explain
It’s definitely possible, just not to confident on how marketable it would be. Besides the ones I have in my poster, we still got Justin Hammer, Giancarlo Esposito’s character is still lurking around somewhere, they might do Grim reaper in Wonderman, Kingpin is doing his own thing rn but could have his plans aligned with other villains…
If only Disney could make a proper deal with Sony, they’d have access to Spidey’s rogues.
So let’s say they start a program that’s designed to rehabilitate villains and let them become heroes you can really only get away with doing that once.
The reason for this is because you don’t want to keep creating new thunderbolts teams and constantly changing up the roster unless you’re doing a suicide squad where certain people are only there to die. At which point that doesn’t feel unique it’s just marvels suicide squad.
Another reason is if you constantly have villains joining this team and having redemptions it makes caring about villains in other movies, it gets to a point where it’s like well if that villain can be redeemed anyone can. Bullseye is a pretty awful human being have him be redeemed and anyone who isn’t on his level of evil doesn’t seem as threatening because well if bullseye is redeemable so is this character.
The only Four on this team that can work as a New Avengerz is Songbird, Abomination (and even he would stick out like a sore thumb on a mostly Spy based team) Agent 13, and maybe Hood. Zemo and espeically Bullseye are way too evil to join this team. They simply can't be redeemed.
- Somehow the new avengers are no longer working under Val, maybe they lose their leverage over her and decide to break away now that they are an established team with their own connections
- Val retaliates by making a new team, cant be Avengers AGAIN, so she mocks Yelena by naming them the Thunderbolts, this time with a line up more similar to the comic version
I think itd likely be a smaller roster to avoid having too many characters. I think Zemo and Mel (as Songbird) are pretty obvious, and maybe bring back Justin Hammer to be Mach-1. That may be enough but one or two more would be plenty.