Thanks to the success of Deadpool & Wolverine, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is riding high, even though basically none of its core characters appear in the film. 2024 was designed to be something of a reset year for the MCU, but they’re back to firing on all cylinders in 2025, and one of their first efforts is slated to be Thunderbolts*.
The movie tells the story of a group of sort-of bad guys who team up to take on missions on behalf of the U.S. government. It’s basically the MCU’s version of the Suicide Squad. The team seems to be fronted by Florence Pugh’s Yelena as she joins a ragtag team that also includes Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, David Harbour, Hannah John-Kamen, and Olga Kurylenko. Julia Louis-Dreyfus also returns to the MCU as Valentina Allegra, and we meet a new character played by Lewis Pullman who goes by Bob.
The exact twists and turns of the plot are not revealed in this first trailer, but what we do get is plenty of action, including a fight between all of the movie’s central characters before they begin to team up. Thunderbolts* is designed, at least in part, to offer a new lineup of characters that we can attach ourselves to for future installments of the MCU.
Whether that approach will work or not remains to be seen, but the movie is one of just several projects that the MCU is launching next year with the goal of entering a new phase in Marvel’s cinematic history. Thunderbolts* will hit theaters on May 2, 2025.
