The latest Marvel films tend to come with baggage full of hope. Hope that they might recapture the magic of the MCU’s heyday. Hope that they could right the ship of the Multiverse Saga, lacking as it has, the gentle hero assembling of the Infinity Saga. With Avengers: Doomsday filming as Thunderbolts* reaches cinemas, it’s notable that Earth’s Mightiest Heroes haven’t been seen for years.

With Thundebolts* closing the MCU’s Phase 5, it feels like Marvel has fixed itself with one antiheroic sweep.

Black Widow Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) is having a mid-saga crisis. Competently cleaning up black ops sites for CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), she struggles with life, her sister’s loss, and hasn’t heard from her ‘dad’ Red Guardian (David Harbour) for a year. Accepting one last mission before a career change, she finds herself trapped with several other Valentina agents, all targeting each other. She, Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and former Captain America John Walker (Wyatt Russell) are the last pieces of evidence Valentina wants eradicated. Escape is one thing, but then there’s the mystery of the shy and quirky man they find there: just who is Bob (Lewis Pullman)?

While Valentina dodges impeachment hearings by covering her dark history of deadly experiments, it becomes clear that one attempt to create a controllable superhero may have worked. With new Congressman Bucky ‘Winter Soldier’ Barnes (Sebastian Stan) on her trail, all Valentia needs is to eliminate those pesky antiheroes before they form some kind of dysfunctional superteam and stop her and whatever she’s cooking up. 

The age-old problem with stories about bad guys is that they don’t stay bad for long. As soon as they start shooting at hordes of other bad guys, they might as well be heroes. Marvel ensures that, despite assembling a motley crew of wronguns, they avoid the trap that similar films (DC’s Suicide Squad) have fallen into. First, by leaning into its characters, and second, having a plan for them beyond this punchy antihero outing. See that mysterious ‘*’ in the title?

These Thunderbolts aren’t just bad people pulled together as an excuse for R-rated action. As the film takes pains to point out through iterations of Monty Python’s ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ sketch, each of the Thunderbolts is a damaged, brutalised soul with plenty of trauma to overcome. 

What better time to introduce one of the highest-powered characters (with a dark side) in the Marvel pantheon? Even if viewers aren’t familiar with the flawed but immensely powerful Sentry, the film eloquently applies its giant metaphor.

The result is surprisingly effective. Thunderbolts* has plenty of ground-level, rugged action, pitting its cast of mid-powered supers against each other and hail after hail of bullets. Throughout, the cast is uniformly excellent, with each returning character earning their finest hour so far (yes, even John Walker). One early casualty, and barely a spoiler given the promos, is Taskmaster. It’s a shame Kurylenko’s time in the MCU doesn’t earn a reprieve. Her removal from the action plays into the film’s dynamics, but it’s also an example of Thunderbolts*’s misstep: it takes some odd steps into the sad pasts of its antiheroes and not wringing out that Black Widow connection enough is a missed opportunity—especially with that film’s scribe Eric Pearson on co-writing duty.

That said, one of Marvel’s greatest decisions was leaning on Florence Pugh. It makes sense that she opens (with a spectacular stunt) and concludes the film. Effortlessly carrying things along with a lilting accent, making light work of heavy dialogue and action, it’s hard to overstate what an incredible boon she is to the MCU. 

Fittingly, Thunderbolts is a flip side to the last MCU film, Captain America: Brave New World. But unlike that attempt at a tense action thriller, Thunderbolts* confidently revels in its personalities. The result is, surprisingly, a callback to the MCU’s early phases. A simple set-up, a metaphorical heart, and zinging lines packed around its physical action. It doesn’t have a comic relief character—despite David Harbour’s best efforts—because every character delivers their moment of comedy mixed with either menace or pathos. 

Bringing in Joanna Calo, a showrunner of The Bear was a good move. But Thunderbolts*’s real strength is its firm grip on character. The film’s early announcement didn’t enthuse many with its roster of sub-par B-villains, but director Jake Schreier keeps everything focussed enough to make that a real strength. Suiting its story, Thunderbolts* isn’t the prettiest Marvel movie—it’s often very gloomy and dark—but that’s all that’s needed to remind us we’re dealing with unlikely Avengers, and make the guns flare. 

Sentry is a well-realised mystery and threat enough to fuse the team, sidestepping that whole issue of bad guys fighting a bad guy (Valentina is sign-posted as the antagonist from the start – a quite unbeatable one), while plumbing some dark and Dantean depths (although arguably not enough) as it drags the group through purgatory. The steady feed and exploration of trauma, mental health, and loneliness is confidently handled and draws in every character. 

Then there’s the impressive demonstration of Sentry’s immense power. Purposefully taking place in the former Avengers Tower, the camera is locked on his incredible abilities while he disassembles the Thunderbolts for their classic second act crisis of conscience. The seeds of the Sentry’s power, and the essential balance it requires, are chillingly realised, even if the third act waits a long time to deliver its emotion-over-violence pay-off. 

If you want to extend the metaphor, activating Sentry poses the same challenge faced by Marvel’s sprawling franchise. Perhaps, even, the antihero’s introduction is the perfect way to explain to fans that they have to take the rough with the smooth…

Based on this, Marvel has a measure of precisely what it needs to do. And who’d have thought we’d get a Marvel film with a meth joke that pays off?