The following post contains SPOILERS for Thunderbolts*. Please note there is no asterisk attached to the word spoilers. These are spoilery spoilers, my dudes. Proceed at your own risk.
After years of speculation, Marvel formally announced they were making a Thunderbolts film at San Diego Comic-Con in the summer of 2022. And that’s what it was called: Thunderbolts. That’s how Marvel referred to the film a few months later at Disney’s D23 convention when they revealed the group’s lineup: Yelena Belova, Red Guardian, Winter Soldier, Ghost, Taskmaster, U.S. Agent, and Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.
Then, at CinemaCon 2024, Marvel’s Kevin Feige announced that the film had a new title — Thunderbolts*, with an asterisk.
“We won’t talk about the asterisk until after release,” he added.
Well, Thunderbolts* is now in wide release. So let’s talk about it.
READ MORE: Our Full Review of Marvel’s Thunderbolts* Is Here
At the time of Feige’s announcement, I speculated — based on nothing except the knowledge gained from a lifetime wasted reading comic books — that the asterisk could refer to the fact that Marvel’s Thunderbolts team has been malleable through the years, and at one point, that name was given to a group of villains working for Norman Osborn on behalf of the U.S. Government. Later, Osborn gained even more power, and turned the Thunderbolts into his personal team of Avengers, whose members looked like familiar heroes but were secretly villains in disguise. His “Spider-Man” for example, was actually Venom. His “Hawkeye” was Bullseye in a Hawkeye costume, and so on.
So my guess back in 2024 was that the asterisk indicated that this new team “start[s] as Thunderbolts, and by the end of the movie they have become the new Avengers.”
Never ever doubt me.
In Thunderbolts*, four morally dubious mercenaries — Yelena, U.S. Agent, Ghost, and Taskmaster — all agree to separate missions given to them by Valentina, who is under investigation by Congress and needs to destroy and an all evidence of her illegal superhuman experiments. That includes these four characters, because they have unauthorized black ops on her behalf. Their missions, you see, are a trap.
By the time Red Guardian shows up (and Taskmaster dies, RIP), the group is on the run, and jokingly begin referring to themselves as the Thunderbolts, named after Yelena’s awful peewee soccer team from childhood, who never won a single game. (Symbolism!) If they can hunt down Valentina and expose her, maybe they can get their lives back.
But at the end of the movie, Valentina — master manipulator that she is — saves her skin yet again. When the Thunderbolts come to arrest her, she instead brings them into a hastily assembled press conference, and introduces them as “The New Avengers,” claiming all of the secretive research she has conducted over the last few years was actually part of the groundwork for creating this new team of state-sanctioned heroes.
A few minutes later the film ends and title card appears onscreen. After a moment, Thunderbolts with an asterisk turns into … The New Avengers.
“The New Avengers” monicker was first introduced in Marvel Comics in 2005. That team had an almost totally different roster from the MCU’s Thunderbolts, but it arose out of similar circumstances. After the comic-book version of the Avengers suffered several tragedies and disbanded, a crisis brought together a new group of heroes, who then decided to take up the Avengers name and remain together as a team.
While its members generally just referred to themselves as “The Avengers,” their comic was titled The New Avengers. The group’s initial lineup consisted of Captain America, Iron Man, Luke Cage, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, Wolverine, Echo, and Sentry — the only character thus far to appear in the New Avengers of Marvel Comics and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The New Avengers series was a major hit with readers, and within a few years, Marvel was cranking out multiple Avengers books simultaneously. Following the events of Civil War, multiple factions began calling themselves the Avengers. The New Avengers book was comprised of heroes who refused to register with the government (the equivalent of the “Sokovia Accords” storyline from the Captain America: Civil War film) like Captain America and Hawkeye, while a second book titled The Mighty Avengers followed a group of heroes who were authorized by the U.S. government, including Captain Marvel, Black Widow, and Wasp.
Both teams considered themselves the “real” Avengers, and they fought over the rights to the name in much the same way we see the MCU’s New Avengers talk about in Thunderbolts*’s post-credits scene. This same overarching storyline eventually birthed a Dark Avengers comic as well, featuring the aforementioned team led by Norman Osborn (as the armored Iron Patriot). That’s the group from the comics that most closely resembles Thunderbolts*.
So which team gets to claim ownership of the Avengers in the MCU? I guess that’s something that will play out in Avengers: Doomsday, which is set to open in theaters on May, 2026. No asterisks needed.
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