Warning: Spoilers for Thunderbolts*, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame
On May 2nd, the newest installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe hit theaters. Thunderbolts* was released on a $180 million budget and grossed $162.1 million globally in its first week. Since the project’s announcement, the Thunderbolts have been sold to us as a misfit team of antiheroes that was created completely by accident. The team consists of mostly characters we know from other films. It features the Winter Soldier, the Red Guardian, US Agent, Ghost, Yelena Belova, and Bob Reynolds. Shortly after the release of the movie, it was revealed that the asterisk (*) in the title stood for “New Avengers.” This caused many Marvel fans to ask the question, “Are the Thunderbolts set to replace the Avengers?” Can a new team of questionable characters really replace the team that has been carrying this franchise for over a decade?
When Thunderbolts* was first released, we really didn’t have much information about the plot of the film. We didn’t know how the team formed, who they were fighting, or why a handful of heroes who are notorious for being difficult would agree to work together. The film opens with CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine facing the threat of impeachment due to her company’s tendency to use human test subjects for their experimentation. To cover her tracks, she lures a team of her former operatives (U.S. Agent, Taskmaster, Yelena Belova, and Ghost) into a death trap. During their escape, they encounter Bob, the sole survivor of Valentina’s super soldier experimental trials. He is given incredible abilities that eventually take him over and he becomes the Sentry, a man determined to engulf the entirety of New York City in darkness. The operatives team up with Red Guardian and the Winter Soldier to help Bob return to his normal self, saving the city in the process. This earned them their name, “The New Avengers.”
This caused a lot of controversy in the real world, and in the MCU. Can the Thunderbolts really replace the Avengers? I don’t think so, and I don’t think the Avengers even really need to be replaced. The Avengers Initiative was first introduced by Nick Fury after the events of the movie Captain Marvel. This was the first time that humans realized there were threats that they could not handle alone. There were aliens, killer robots, and even gods, and they certainly did not have the resources to defend themselves. The aim of the initiative was to create a team that would protect the human race, and they were “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.” Today, when we hear the word “Avengers,” most of us will think of the core six—Black Widow, Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk and Hawkeye. But they weren’t always meant to be the face of the team. When Fury first proposed the idea of a superhero team, he didn’t have any of them in mind. The initiative was created back in 1995, when there weren’t any publicly known superheroes: Captain America would be frozen for another sixteen years, and Captain Marvel was just part of one massive S.H.I.E.L.D. cover up. So Fury had no choice but to scour the globe looking for individuals who could rise to the occasion and protect Earth. When the time came for this team to assemble and fight the Chitauri in the battle of New York, Fury called on the core six to save the day. Over the years the team has changed so much, heroes have come and gone, and their enemies increasingly got more powerful.
I don’t think the Avengers ever really needed to be a specific group of people. When Fury chose these heroes, he knew they weren’t going to be around forever. Someday they would die, but he knew they wouldn’t let the team die with them. He trusted that they would be able to recruit a new generation to carry on the name and continue to offer safety and protection to the people of Earth. And they did the best they could to find new heroes that had the strength to help them. They recruited the Maximoff twins in Avengers: Age of Ultron and Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War. With all of the villains they faced over the years, it was inevitable that some people would lose their lives along the way. But it was still a shock when we lost key heroes like Black Widow, Iron Man, the Vision, and Captain America in Infinity War and Endgame. And in a way, the Avengers were always meant to die. They were supposed to be a group of people that were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice if it meant saving lives, and as much as we didn’t want to admit it, we knew one day that we would end up losing some of our favorite characters. But after the amount of pain and loss we witnessed in the last Avengers movie, it was sort of assumed that the team was over, that someone else would have to step up and be Earth’s new protectors. But I don’t think the Avengers ever really went anywhere.
In the past couple of years there just haven’t been any threats that were on the same level as the ones the Avengers usually faced, so I think that’s really the only reason they hadn’t made any recent MCU appearances. While the Thunderbolts can call themselves whatever they want, they still aren’t really “The New Avengers.” The Avengers are still around, whether we are seeing them fighting heroes in every new Marvel movie, or they only come out of the woodwork when a real world-threatening villain enters the equation. I don’t really see the team going anywhere in the coming years, especially with two new movies centered on them set to be released in the near future. But even after that, the Avengers will continue to exist in the MCU for a long time, long after the core six and the Thunderbolts are gone. With new members stepping up when existing Avengers are reaching the end of their time, this will ensure that the Avengers continue on in the new Marvel universe.
