Yelena Belova Is ‘A Completely Different Person’ In Marvel’s Thunderbolts\*, Says Florence Pugh
Of any Marvel character, Yelena Belova has had it particularly rough. She was...

Of any Marvel character, Yelena Belova has had it particularly rough. She was raised in a sleeper cell family, and forced into being a young assassin. Then she was blipped out of existence for five years. And when she rematerialised, she found that her sister – Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow – was dead, having sacrificed herself during the Avengers’ efforts to bring everybody back. Bummer. While she has new back-up in Thunderbolts*, Florence Pugh’s sharp-shooter finds herself surrounded by undesirables and anti-heroes – like Wyatt Russell’s disgraced former Cap, John Walker, and Hannah John-Kamen’s Ghost. (Above you’ll see them all alongside Lewis Pullman’s mysterious ‘Bob’.)
As Pugh tells Empire, the Yelena we meet in Thunderbolts* is one who carries the weight of everything she’s been through. “She’s a completely different person to the person that you’d assume she would be,” she says. “She’s coming out of a few years of quite traumatic events. Where does that leave a person?” In a team as messed-up as the Thunderbolts, apparently.
Russell, however, is excited about the evolution of John Walker, aka U.S. Agent. Introduced in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier as a particularly punchable riff on the Steve Rogers archetype, before going spectacularly off the rails and losing the Captain America mantle, he’s rougher and readier in his Thunderbolts* get-up. “We look fucking cool,” Russell puts it. “And last time, I’m gonna be honest, I don’t think I looked very cool.” The biggest upgrade? The headgear. “[This time] they made my helmet not look like the end of a penis,” says Russell. Fitting, at least, for a character who turned out to be a bit of a dick.
Read Empire’s full Thunderbolts* article – running through every member of the disreputable super-team – in the Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning issue, on sale Thursday 13 February. Order a copy online here. Thunderbolts* comes to UK cinemas from 2 May.
What's Your Reaction?






