Fans of Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova get hyped amid ‘Thunderbolts’ announcement

Now that Marvel has officially greenlit a Thunderbolts movie, including attaching Robot & Frank director Jake Schreier to the project, fans are hyped at the prospect of the film being touted as Marvel’s answer to DC’s The Suicide Squad — e.g. a supervillain group being the main focus.

But one fan-favorite character in particular, Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belov, is getting much of the love.

The lineup of rogues may potentially include Daniel Bruhl’s Baron Zemo; Hannah John-Kamen’s Ava Starr, AKA Ghost; Olga Kurylenko’s Antonia Dreykov, AKA Taskmaster; Tim Roth’s Emil Blonsky, AKA Abomination; Wyatt Russell’s John Walker, AKA U.S. Agent; and Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes, AKA Winter Soldier.

It was one fan’s assessment that while they were happy to see the girl power shared between Yelena and Ava in a movie, the fact that the film would be over-stuffed with so many other characters gave them pause.

Others were just excited about the match-up possibilities, specifically Yelena and Bucky possibly meeting each other for the first time.

As an aside, the fact that Yelena could be called a “villain” in this synopsis — like, how?

Sure, the character was a minor antagonist in Hawkeye, but that was only because she mistakenly thought Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton murdered her sister. Once she found out the truth, she was on the Avengers’ side, let’s not forget.

Another Twitter user proclaimed that while they were excited about Yelena and other characters, some of them could arguably be left on the cutting room floor. Taskmaster, in particular, was considered a disappointment among many comic book fans.

There’s no set release date for Thunderbolts, but it’s reportedly considered a high priority within Marvel.