Marvel Antiheroes Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Sebastian Stan Team Up in ‘Thunderbolts*’ Trailer

23 Sep 2024, 16:15 · Rolling Stone

Marvel has released a trailer for their own version of DC’s Suicide Squad. In the Thunderbolts* teaser, skilled assassin Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) pays her father Red Guardian or Alexei (David Harbour) a visit, after a spell of depression. She confides in her bearded, robe-wearing father, asking if he feels fulfilled.

“There’s something wrong with me, an emptiness, I’m just drifting and I don’t have purpose,” Pugh says in the trailer, released Monday. “I thought throwing myself into work was the answer.”

In the Jake Schreier-directed Thunderbolts*, a ragtag crew of Marvel villains are tasked with missions mandated by the U.S. government. As the misfits are lured to a top secret facility, they instinctively attempt to kill one another. “Everyone here has done bad things: shadow opps, robbing government labs, contract kills,” Pugh says in the trailer. “So, someone wants us gone.”

Veteran members within the Marvel Cinematic Universe join forces in the superhero flick. Cast members include Black Widow‘s Pugh, Harbour, and Olga Kurylenko; The Falcon and the Winter Soldier‘s Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus; and Ant-Man and the Wasp’s Hannah John-Kamen. Lewis Pullman, who stars as the bewildered Bob, is new to the supervillain force.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly during Comic-Con 2024, Harbour joked that the relationship between his character Alexei and Pugh’s Yelena in Thunderbolts* “starts out terrible, and then it ends pretty terrible, too.” The two reunite in Thunderbolts* after the death of Yelena’s sister Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson).

“I don’t think Alexei’s in the best place, and there’s a bit of an estrangement happening,” Harbour said. “Part of the film is — for a lot of these characters, not to get too deep on it — but it deals a little bit with mental illness and self-hatred, for sure, and the tripping over yourself. Part of what this family dynamic is about is overcoming these things in themselves to unlock who they really are as people.”

Thunderbolts* marks one of the final Phase 5 movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film arrives May 2, 2025.