Thunderbolts\* Trailer: The MCU’s Dark Avengers Assemble As Marvel Team-Up Teases Asterisk Reveal

At a hefty three-and-a-half minutes long, the first teaser trailer for Marvel's upcoming supervillain team-up joint Thunderbolts* did a pretty solid job (re-)introducing the members of director Jake Schreier's ragtag band of ne'er-do-wells. In fact, with its well-placed 'Where Is My Mind?' needledrop, grounded action set pieces, and The Winter Soldier reminiscent political thriller vibes, it as good as had us sold already on the prospect of seeing Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova, David Harbour's Red Guardian, Sebastian Stan's Bucky Barnes, and some of the MCU's underutilised baddies (Wyatt Russell's John Walker, Olga Kurylenko's Taskmaster, Hannah John-Kamen's Ghost) thrown together, Suicide Squad style. But just in case you needed any more persuading, the new special look at the movie that premiered at D23 Brazil this past weekend is a real clincher — not least because it hints at the reason for that pesky asterisk! Check it out below:

If the first Thunderbolts* teaser was a lesson in how you do a trailer, then this is a pretty good example of how to do the follow-up. We get Bucky Barnes on a motorbike, rocking badass shades, going full Terminator in the desert. We get Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Valentina Allegra de Fontaine revealing it was the CIA after all who snapped up Avengers Tower (bang goes that Oscorp theory). We get The Red Guardian and The Winter Soldier trading super serum origin stories. And we get Lewis Pullman's absolutely-Sentry-but-we're-still-not-calling-him-that-yet Bob acting very much like a man on the cusp of unleashing the power of a million exploding suns amidst a tirade of quips, ruminations on trauma, and fiery explosions. All that, and there's even time for Harbour's Red Guardian to jubilantly shout "We are the Thunderbolts!" before the rest of the gang hastily shoot his name choice down, leading to a very conspicuously placed asterisk drop on the title. Dark Avengers confirmed? Only time will tell...

With Captain America: Brave New World set to hit cinemas just a few months prior to this, it looks like the MCU is getting down to business with a brace of taut political thrillers lined up to kick off 2025. And with the overarching plot of Thunderbolts* still maintaining an exciting air of mystery, the imminent arrival of Sentry promising that the balance of power in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is about to shift, and all present signs pointing towards another great Marvel Studios misfit team-up movie, suffice it to say that 2 May, 2025 can't come soon enough.