Thunderbolts* review: The broken toys of the MCU finally get their team-up, but is it worth it?

Thunderbolts* does not open with grandeur but with exhaustion. We see Yelena Belova completing a series of morally questionable tasks across the globe, each one dirtier than the last, and, by the time she reaches the superhuman lab in Malaysia, the mission is just another stop in a long string of actions she clearly no longer believes in.

Her voiceover is calm but sharp, laced with a bitter honesty. She performs the tasks and questions the job and purpose of it and life altogether in real time. That internal conflict, delivered without melodrama or spectacle, sets the tone for everything that follows.

This is not a film about saving the world. Thunderbolts* is about surviving the systems that demand people like Yelena keep saving it without ever being saved themselves. It is about what is left when the illusion of heroism is stripped away and all that remains are fractured people being used one last time by a machine that never cared for them to begin with.

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Valentina’s mission was never about saving anyone

At its core, Thunderbolts* is a story about manipulation masquerading as purpose. Valentina Allegra de Fontaine assembles her team not to build anything but to bury her own secrets. Every member—Yelena, Bucky, Ghost, Taskmaster, and John Walker—carries more trauma than trust, and their assigned task is never what it seems.

Not only in imagery but also in tone, the shadow of the 2012 Battle of New York lingers heavily over the story. This is the MCU looking into its own mirror and finding something haunted. And we get to see some images that mirror the events of The Avengers, and it's not nostalgia that looks back at us in that mirror. It's more of a big question mark.

Everything they face is designed to break them further. From the false mission, the lethal infighting, and the revelation that they were never meant to survive, the Thunderbolts* are pawns in a game the rules of which are never explained to them. Yet somehow, out of that design for collapse, something almost beautiful emerges.

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Yelena and Bucky carry the emotional weight of the film

What gives Thunderbolts* its emotional weight is not just the plot but the people holding it together. Florence Pugh delivers a powerhouse performance as Yelena Belova, balancing razor-sharp wit with a deep undercurrent of grief and exhaustion. This is not the sarcastic little sister of Black Widow.

The version of Yelena we see in this film is a woman haunted by what she’s done and lost and the meaning behind all this. She becomes the moral center of the film without ever claiming that space. She earns it by carrying every scene with clarity, tension, and a pain that never quite goes away.

Sebastian Stan matches her with quiet intensity. His portrayal of Bucky Barnes here is among the most layered we have seen. No longer defined by the Winter Soldier program nor fully healed from it, Bucky walks through the film like a man who has nothing left to prove but everything left to atone for. He grounds the scenes instead of dominating them with his presence, but still he commands the narrative, and it was long overdue that he be given this space to stand.

Together, Yelena and Bucky anchor the film not as leaders in the traditional sense but as the two characters whose emotional arcs justify the mission beyond its political setup.

Even Alexei, Yelena’s father figure, manages to bring levity without ever breaking the tone. He functions as comic relief, yes, but always with the sadness of a man trying too hard to be needed again. The humor never undercuts the mood. Instead, it reinforces just how heavy the air is around these characters. That tonal consistency (and the refusal to let cynicism override meaning) is one of the film’s quiet triumphs.

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The Sentry, the Void, and the collapse of identity

The focus on Bob, later revealed as the Sentry, shifts the film into something far more existential. At first, Bob seems almost incidental, a strange anomaly buried within the Thunderbolts’* mission. Soon, however, his presence becomes the heart of the narrative’s collapse and rebirth.

As a product of Valentina’s secret experiments, he embodies everything the team is fighting against: power without conscience, control disguised as salvation and the monstrous consequences of state-sponsored dehumanization.

Bob is powerful, but he is unstable. And when his mind fractures, what emerges is not a super-soldier but a mythic threat: the Void. The shift is jarring but deliberate, forcing the characters out of tactical survival mode and into psychological warfare. As New York begins to disintegrate into shadow (with painful visual reminders of both the Battle of New York and the Blip), the stakes become less about defeating a villain and more about salvaging a person, a consciousness torn apart by manipulation, grief and isolation.

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Redemption through memory, not victory

Yelena’s journey into Bob’s mind, into both literal and figurative darkness, is the film’s most unexpected and poetic sequence. Instead of another CGI-heavy battle, we are given a surreal confrontation with trauma itself. Inside the Void, we see the memories that broke Bob. We see Yelena confronting her suffering and his.

Bucky’s quiet line about his “blissful” past hits harder than expected. And when the rest of the team joins her, not to fight but to stand beside him, the film finds its most human moment. Here, redemption is not about winning but choosing to stay, choosing to believe that even the most broken person is worth saving.

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Rebranding trauma: the final betrayal of the Thunderbolts*

The name Thunderbolts* is not just a codename thrown out mid-mission. It comes from Alexei, pulling from a childhood memory of Yelena's favorite soccer team, a rare gesture of warmth in a story so full of shadows. For a moment it feels like something genuine, a name earned rather than assigned. Something chosen rather than imposed.

Nonetheless, that sincerity is shattered in the end when, with cameras flashing and power shifting, Valentina strips them of their identity once again, slapping on the label of "New Avengers" and repurposing their trauma for political theatre.

The post-credits scene drives the point home with chilling precision. A distress signal from deep space. A looming ship marked with a bold, unmistakable "4". A promise of more, bigger, louder.

However, none of it feels heroic. Not anymore. Because in a world where even the word "Avengers" can be commodified, where branding overrides belief and history is rewritten in real time, what does heroism actually mean?

The final note of Thunderbolts* is not one of closure or triumph but something colder and more unsettling, and not because the story fails. Because its truth cuts too close. This is no longer the age of heroes. It is the age of optics, slogans polished for press conferences, names being licensed, patented, and weaponized.

Naming a team "Avengers" is no longer about ideals but control. It's about selling the illusion of unity even when everything underneath is broken. Yet, despite all that, the film resists complete collapse into cynicism.

The bond between the Thunderbolts*, however fragile or compromised, still meant something. Their choice to stand together, reach into Bob’s mind, and pull him back from oblivion was real.

The system may twist their legacy. It may co-opt their story. But it cannot erase what they chose to be, even if it was only for a moment.

Rating: 5 out of 5 mission briefings that lied, cereal boxes left untouched, and team names stolen before they could mean something.