For a team supposed to be comprised largely of villains, there are an awful lot of rehabilitated baddies, fan favorites, and straight-up good guys on the roster for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Thunderbolts movie.
Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes has been a knight in shining armor for a long time now having used his downtime in Wakanda to exercise his demons once and for all, while Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova is so popular she could probably drown a sackful of kittens and still send audiences home happy.
Even John Walker has found a new lease of surprise favor among the fandom, so the titular team aren’t really bad guys at all. In fact, one Redditor has pointed out that by the time Thunderbolts arrives, Olga Kurylenko’s Taskmaster will have been free from the mind control implemented by her father for almost a decade.
Not only that, but the original poster goes on to explain how the antihero ensemble adventure could rehabilitate the polarizing figure’s reputation in the eyes of the Marvel masses, who weren’t exactly won over with Black Widow‘s bait-and-switch.
On the surface, Thunderbolts feels like a fairly unnecessary and inessential addition to MCU canon, especially when it lands hot on the heels of Captain America: New World Order, which is no doubt going to drum up more hype and anticipation as the first entry in the post-Steve Rogers saga.
D23 left MCU supporters a little underwhelmed once the names were revealed, but it also presents the perfect opportunity to turn those preconceptions on their heads and have the likes of Taskmaster and Ghost become newly-minted favorites.