If you’re not the type of crazy person who goes hunting for the leaked, pirated trailers that premiere at San Diego Comic-Con or Disney’s D23, then you’ve got good news: your first look at Marvel Studios’ Lightning bolts* is here. And if you have no idea what a Thunderbolt is — or why it has an asterisk — I can answer part of that: It’s sort of Marvel’s version of the Suicide Squad, a collection of former heroes and former villains assembled to take on a super-powered threat.
As the first (very nice) teaser trailer for Lightning bolts* reveals, in its generous three-minute runtime, that Yelena Belova/White Widow (Florence Pugh) reunites with father figure Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian, then clashes with U.S. Agent/John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ghost/Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen), Taskmaster/Antonia Dreykov (Olga Kurylenko), and the Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) to form an Avengers-esque team. The threat? It could be Bob (Lewis Pullman). It could be Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Or it could be something else, because the Lightning bolts* trailer doesn’t really delve into who Bob is Real is: one of Marvel Comics’ most powerful superheroes, who carries a dark secret.
De Fontaine has been secretly assembling this group of cast-offs and misfits over the past few years, as seen in Marvel Cinematic Universe films like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier And Black Widow. Now she’s gathering the whole gang to take on the worst kind of villain there is. And it looks like she might have a pretty sweet piece of real estate to pull off her plan. (That’s Avengers Tower, right?)
from Marvel Lightning bolts* is directed by Jake Schreier and written by Eric Pearson, Lee Sung Jin and Joanna Calo. The fact that many of those people helped create the fantastic TV series Beef is a harbinger of good things.
Lightning bolts* will hit theaters in May 2025. By then, we’ll probably know why there’s an asterisk in the title.