#196 – Thunderbolts: The Underdog Avengers (Reflection #3)

Welcome back to Marvel Maniac and MCU After Show. This is your host, Eric Cicada, aka Mr. Honest. And today we're diving right back into Thunderbolts. About five months later and this movie is still residing within my soul. This isn't the first time we've talked about it here. In fact, this is our third conversation about the film. We already covered the big opening impressions when it first dropped, but now after sitting with it, after watching it again a couple times, I want to reflect what lingers, what sticks after the hype. That's what this episode is about. For one thing, they changed the title about a week after they revealed it was the New Avengers instead of the Thunderbolts. Thunderbolts still seems to be sticking as the main name, though. And I renamed my other episode that was the Thunderbolts the New Avenger. I might, I might go fix that because Thunderbolts is still a big name. It is not one or the other. It's both the Thunderbolts and the New Avengers. As you might have recognized, the Thunderbolts aren't Marvel's clean, shiny team. No, they're not. The Avengers assembled on a high tower, smiling for the cameras. Although I would say actually, you know, they are in a lot of magazines. And it seems like there's a little bit of controversy if, if they are the legitimate Avengers among the public. Not alone Sam Wilson, which we learn later in the post credits scene. But one thing is for sure, they are the underdog Avengers. People who have earned their keep in their own right, but who come together carrying stigma, scars, and reputations that make the world question them. And that's what makes them powerful. They're not Avengers by name, but they are Avengers by heart. Little star notation like they put. I like the name reveal, though. I always really, really like that. One thing that like, kind of itches me in a little bit of the wrong way is Taskmaster. Let's just say talk about her for a minute. She looks awesome. Her suits upgraded, she. It looks like she could put up a pretty good fight, but she gets offed in the first few minutes of them teaming up. They totally would have had her on the team if they realized like they. They were being betrayed by Val five seconds earlier. It seems kind of cheap for the character, but not really. You know, it's. It's a decision to off somebody at the beginning. It gives you this idea that nobody's really safe, but at the same time, I, I just imagine the actress. I have to look outside the movie and imagine the actress probably didn't love that, but who knows? Maybe when she was pitched the idea, they told her, you're going to go out fast, but we want to bring you back for one more action scene. And you'll be the kind of death that brings the team together. They're not necessarily avenging her, however, she's never brought up again like she's brought up once or twice. And it's just one of the hanging chads I kind of wish didn't get shoved into the movie. And I mean, it's not shoved in. The deal is I just wish that she had some more time. I wish she was a part of the team because she's just as troubled as any of the other Avengers. And that's what's kind of the common string line here. These people are flawed. They have sometimes some dark, horrible histories, and they're coming together to be something greater. And that is a true underdog story, I would say. The Taskmaster, all she went through with Natasha's betrayal, thinking she was taking Drake off out and, you know, Taskmaster getting completely ripped apart and turned into, like a robot by her horrible father. I mean, that's some. That's some stuff to hold on to for this movie if she stayed alive. But there might have been a reason. They didn't want a certain amount of characters to go forward. They wanted to raise the stakes by taking someone out early, letting you think that anyone could die, even though no one else really dies. No, I don't think nobody else dies. But let's just talk about some of these characters and like the things they have in common, their flavors, flaws in their past come back to haunt them in the sense of public perception. For example. For example, Bucky Barnes, right? The Winter Soldier. He is scarred by his past as the Winter Soldier. He went through hell as the Winter Soldier. And the reputation that he holds, well, it's apparently good enough to get him seat as a senator, right? But that makes me wonder if he could carry the shield as Captain America. Because people were arguing, well, Bucky was the Winter Soldier. He can't go be doing something important like that. But then he's working in courtrooms and, you know, he's a business political figure now. So it makes me wonder, will we ever see a Bucky Captain America? My guess, no. But that's okay because Bucky really brings it. Whether or not he has Captain America's name or just the Winter Soldier Classic, I think he'd prefer just Bucky at this point. I wonder if he associates Winter Soldier as The bad name of the bad guy who did the horrible things out of his control because of the brainwashing. Elena goes through a giant transformation in this movie. She's obviously the main character. She's brings up from the very beginning. She feels a void. The word void very prominent in this movie. That is the opposite side of Bob, his evil counterpart. Kind of like the Hulk in a sense. Cuz he is completely separated from that other half. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the word void is used even that BOB is called that. And Battle World technically from Secret wars is going to be in the Void. What we call from Loki and Deadpool the bottom of the darkest dimension just outside of time. Or it could be just technically present time. It's called the Void at the end of time. I think it is. And the Loki. Well, I wonder how if that connects to Bob and Sentry slash his version of the Void, because it's brought up a lot. And it's not just like. It's not just like this place isn't completely named the Void. Like they could have named him anything else. It's going to connect to the bigger secret war story in my opin opinion. But you know, I get getting a little off the beaten path here. Yelena, she goes through a huge transformation. She's a loner. She's not getting enough out of life. And just at the right time, she met a band of misfits. And she. She doesn't have a great history with the Red Room. She had to kill people. She has a lot of things haunting her from her past. And she's drinking and she needs people in her life. And that's something that everyone kind of learns. They need each other. And. And that. That's very apparent very fast. John Walker, I mean Falcon and Winter Soldier. You couldn't. Couldn't help but villainize the guy. He was taking our Captain America. He wanted Sam Wilson to be Captain America. And even though Sam did put the shield down willingly, he put it down thinking he was the not gonna any anyone else was going to pick it up. And not long after he put it in that museum, we got John Walker coming in, being Captain America and making a horribly dark mistake in front of the world because he took a super soldier serum. So he does have those superpowers. But he kills a guy who he blames for his best friend's death. The guy who he killed was a terrorist. However, he wasn't the guy who killed his best friend. But that still haunts him, you know, we see when the void. Not the void, Bob touches him. You know, when we have one of those flashbacks early in the movie, we see John's very withdrawn from his wife. He's not watching his kid. He's reading an article about the disgraced Captain America. It's just baggage. Everyone's got their baggage. The Red Guardian yearning for relevance. You know, he. He loves the hero game. He's comedic relief, but he has a lot of passion and he brings so much character to the show. I'd say his past is dark because he worked for the Red Room too, in a way. However, he's just got kind of like a sad life right now, trying to think about the glory days and if they'll ever come back. Ghost Another one with pain Searching for belonging all of Ant man and the Wasp. Ghost is kind of your anti hero where she's not really the bad bad guy, but she is the antagonist. But at the end, the Ant man fam decides to help her out. So they were getting particles in the quantum realm actually for her when the snap happened. So Scott Lang lost connection to the outside. Very scary. But we all know how that goes. Maybe we'll revisit Ant man together one day. I love those movies. You know, Val, even, she's like a dark Nick Fury. And in. In the way that everyone's trying to kill each other because of her, which is kind of like a little bit Unforgiven. It's such a dark premise that even Val has a. A traumatic flashback from the Void. And I think she is a flawed anti hero as well. I think she's gonna be a leader and a spokesperson for them, regardless of what she had done in this movie. The New Avengers were kind of pushed into that role, but since they took the role from her, I'm assuming she gets off the hook for all the stuff she was being judged for in this movie. And she gets credit for helping form a team that saved New York without everyone knowing the narrative that it was one of their own. Bob, the century that caused all this and. And directly Val started all this. So I see pieces of myself in all of them. Honestly, there's something about this movie that lifts me up. It relates. There's darkness in everyone. Everyone has some sort of past. Not everyone, but people have passed and rough past and go through hardships. And the hardships in this movie are completely relatable. And they're. I mean, I wasn't captain before and depressed about it, but hey, I was a speech state championship in high school. I'm not depressed about it, but I'm thinking, man, that was kind of a glory day. You know, we have our history and it's whether it's us living up to our best selves in our mind or fulfilling destiny and being a hero, or just taking that leap and making a friend in the darkest of places, in the void itself, everyone does a group hug. And that's how the day is saved. I mean, this is a bold movie. And it's not just your average Avengers movie. It's darker, it's grittier, but it has a lot of heart. And it brings a really cool team together of underdogs, like I said. So here's where it gets really interesting. Sam Wilson doesn't know the team the way we do, right? He hasn't been. He hasn't seen their growth, their redemption, their scars turning into strength. All he knows is his friend Bucky the Winter Soldier, still stigmatized in the public eye, is now running with a band of misfits under Val's leadership. I mean, Sam knows John Walker. He knows he's all right now, but he's not a perfect guy. He might have knowledge on the other characters, like Red Guardian doesn't know who he is. Sam's most likely getting a team together with like Shang Chi and maybe Spider Man. I don't know. I don't know if that's like, like more mainstream heroes. So it's kind of amazing that we get to see these characters come out of their darkness, into a light, into a new meaning, a new age for themselves. But their reputations precede them. And that's why Sam is out here trying to build his own Avengers. Because he wants us. He wants to carry Steve's mantle with pride and legitimacy. It bothers me that he hasn't started that already. I mean, even at the end of the New Avengers, it's 14 months later and Sam is still trying to form his own team and get it estab established. How long does that take you? He made you Captain America how many years? Five, six years ago now, you know, So I wanna, I want to see a little more of his side of this. And I think it's been speculated that this post credit scene I'm talking about where they learned that Sam trying to trademark the Avengers, I think that is going to be in Doomsday, as many have speculated. So Sam forming his own Avengers with these underdog Avengers on the side, giving him just a hard time on the name. He sees them, the Thunderbolts Avengers, New Avengers as a liability and dangerous wild Card, I'm guessing. Meanwhile, as the audience, we've watched him earn that respect. I said, like I said. And fight through stigma prove their worth. They have that dynamic, that collision, a perspective. That's Marvel planting seeds for some of the most emotionally charged storytelling ahead. I think they nailed this movie. I, I really love the New Avengers. So every one of these characters has a bit of a void inside. Stigma, guilt, trauma. But they aren't defined by it. They fight through it together. And that makes them just as valid as Sam Wilson's Avengers, maybe even more relatable because it's not about perfection, it's about. It's about stepping up despite the pain. The void isn't all of us. In a sense, the void is that lost year after you failed something you really needed or wanted in life. Certain years that ring my mind are 2013 and 2022. I won't say why I'm going to say this word one time because I don't want to overdo it or knock it on the head too much. But mental health, mental health is important. Friendship is important for that mental health. Self acceptance is also important for it too. I wasn't going to say the phrase mental health, but I did just say it 50 times. But it's, it's something to note. This was a movie about people coming together and fighting their inner demons and coming out on top of the world despite everyone cheering for them, not knowing that they were the ones who caused this void situation indirectly. Well, Val did. So by the end of this post credits scene, you know, we don't know what the hell they're gonna do with Bob. He can't turn into Sentry without having the void on, you know, on the other side of things. So that's going to come into play during one of these next movies, Doomsday or Secret Wars. But there's something that I noticed, and I'm sure you all did too, when they say, you know, this person will return at the end of the credits, the Thunderbolts will return. It didn't say that. It said, I think it said the New Avengers will return. And Bob. So like, Bob's separate. He's not in all the group pictures. He's kind of a hidden asset or someone they're trying to protect because of what he did in New York that day. Nobody really knew knew what exactly what it was. So I think he's just sticking with his friends and they have him along so they could A, keep everyone safe from him, but B, be there for him because he's a friend. And it seems like this team is actually full of friends, which, you know, we get that a little bit from the bigger original Avengers, but they're definitely like co workers with a history. By the end of the series, Steve and Tony do have like a brotherhood type thing going on. However, five years is a long time for them not to talk that much. They are very different, these new Avengers than the old Avengers. That's what I like about them. Like all we do is punch and shoot. That's one of my favorite lines. I like that. But we got Ghost, who's a little bit of a superhero with powers and same with the center such the void. I think the void could probably unleash in a positive way against the forces of evil that we're yet to meet and see in Doomsday and Secret Wars. So yeah, everyone's got a little bit of a void inside of them and it's hard to confront. But we know that if we do, it's a positive. It should be a positive thing and it should be. Honestly, everyone should be given a second or third chance in life. And I love that these characters come together to be a superhero team after being kind of anti heroes. It's just inspiring. And the fact that they're held up in Avengers Tower, that's just icing on the cake. So no thunderbolts. Sl New Avengers aren't the other guys. They're not Marvel's leftovers. They're proof that flawed people can stand side by side and still make something heroic. And that tension with Sam Wilson in Avengers. His Avengers. Actually, that's what makes it exciting, honestly. Because when these two visions of heroism finally meet the polished new Captain America and the scarred misfits, sparks are going to fly. And I can't wait to see it. I mean, they're going to be having to deal with Dr. Doom and each other. Lot to think about. A lot to think about. Do you enjoy the show? Do you have any suggestions on what you like to hear? Marvelmaniacpod Gmail.com While you're at it, give the show a light review on Apple Podcast wherever you listen and rate us 5 stars or give us a thumbs up. I seriously can't tell you how much that would mean to me. I really want to get the show out there and we are getting a lot more listeners lately. So we're building and I love it. And boy do I love talking about Marvel. And with you in the description of this episode is a link tree. You should click it. Go join our patreon it's where we come together. I post new minisodes every Saturday, just five minute or so, sometimes more, sometimes less mini episodes about different topics, different things. We just did one on Eternals and it's a lot of fun. We have like 20 episodes almost now on there. So go check it out. Become a part part of our community. You know, donate the minimum or the max or even just join to keep without any money. Just to keep yourself in the loop with us Marvel Maniacs. We would love to have you. Patreon.com marvelmaniac it's also in our link tree and our about we are done for the day and I love talking about this kind of side of the thunderbolts that we haven't touched on and the mental health aspect. Dang it. I said it again. It's important. Okay? If your mental health is important and you need to talk to someone and not be ashamed if you ever need that kind of help and find find your found family that even if you don't have a family that you're super close with, I'm sure you have a friend that would be that person for you because you're amazing. That's all I got for today. This has been Marvel Maniac and MCU after show. Thank you again so much for listening. Eric Cicada aka Mr. Honest and until next time, Avengers disassemble.