‘Thunderbolts*’ Trailer Might Confirm Big Multiverse Connection

Thunderbolts* made a big splash with a great new trailer that debuted during Super Bowl LIX. While Captain America: Brave New World is the next MCU film on the schedule, Thunderbolts* is right behind it and will kick off the summer movie season. The film acts as a sequel to Black Widow, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, with a little bit of Ant-Man and the Wasp continuation thrown in for good measure. The film looks to be a classic team-up that highlights the different personalities from the various corners of the MCU, which has been the winning formula in movies like The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Avengers: Infinity War.

While on the surface, Thunderbolts* feels like an odd pick for the MCU at this specific time. It is the final film of Phase 5, with Ironheart being the true conclusion right after. It is a team of large anti-heroes and lesser-known characters in what appears to be a semi-grounded espionage story sandwiched in between a bigger story unfolding in the multiverse saga with big names like Deadpool, The Fantastic Four, and Captain America. It begs the question of why Marvel Studios is prioritizing Thunderbolts* as part of the Multiverse Saga over a concept they have been planting for years, like The Young Avengers.

The trailer for Thunderbolts* gave the audience a sneak peek at the film’s main threat, The Sentry, played by Lewis Pullman. While not shown in full, a glimpse of his powerset and his character’s name might hint at larger connections to Loki, Deadpool & Wolverine, and the yet-to-be-released Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. Here is how Thunderbolts* is a stealth Multiverse movie and an essential part of the MCU’s future.

The Sentry and The Void in ‘Thunderbolts*’

The Sentry was created by writer Paul Jenkins and artist Jae Lee, with uncredited conceptual contributions by Rick Veitch in 2000 with the publication of The Sentry #1. In the Marvel Universe, The Sentry’s real name is Robert “Bob” Reynolds, and he is one of the most powerful beings in the universe, a man with the powers of “a hundred exploding suns.”

The Sentry has ties to the entire history of the Marvel Universe, but he made everyone forget he existed. He did this as a way to stop his arch-enemy, The Void. It is revealed that The Void and The Sentry are the same person. To save the world, The Sentry erased his memory from the mind of nearly every person on Earth, even his own, and therefore defeated the Void.

In the comics, there have been multiple explanations for what precisely the Void is and why it manifests. It has been suggested that it is the true personality of Robert Reynolds, while Sentry is a made-up persona. One is the idea that the Void is a manifestation of the hole in Bob Reynolds’s heart after being a superhero eroded his humanity. There is also the simple explanation that there is good and bad for everyone, with the Sentry and the Void manifestations. Yet we believe that Marvel might be merging two concepts: The Void that takes over the Sentry is tied to the Void at the End of Time.

The Sentry’s Void Is Tied to The Void at the End of Time.

The Void at the End of Time, often referred to as The Void, was first glimpsed in Loki and is the primary setting of Deadpool & Wolverine. It is a metaphysical junkyard where everything the Time Variance Authority (TVA) has ever pruned ends up. While it might be a coincidence that the Sentry’s villainous alter ego shares the same name as the multiversal wasteland that the MCU has introduced, that feels like something Marvel Studios might realize would be confusing for general audiences. Instead of having two different Voids, the MCU might connect the two concepts.

The Thunderbolts* trailer seems to hint at some connection between The Sentry’s Void persona and the MCU’s Void as a physical place. The few brief glimpses fans get of The Sentry in action show him waving his hand with people disappearing, leaving a black mark from where they originally were. This visually evokes the Human Shadow Etched in Stone, an exhibition at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum that depicts the shadow of a person when the atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima. The visual of nothing but a shadow being left behind from a massive heat blast was also used in Iron Man 3 when Extremis soldiers blew up. The Sentry’s use of it, coupled with the shadow engulfing New York, feels like a primal version of a person and place being pruned from the timeline.

While it is likely The Sentry himself will have ties to the Super Soldier program like his comic book counterpart, seemingly confirmed by Thunderbolts* featuring super-soldier characters like The Winter Soldier, Red Guardian, and U.S. Agent. However, The Sentry might become the Void due to him being the conduit of multiversal powers. Instead of the multiverse tear of an incursion happening with the physical location, what happens if it manifests in a person?

That raw power could drive a person mad, leading to Bob Reynolds making another persona and naming it The Void after the dimension he is connected to. Bob Reynolds could be tapping into The Void as a power source, similar to how Marc Spector taps into the Egyptian God Khonshu to become Moon Knight. That firmly connects Thunderbolts* and its main threat to the larger Multiverse Saga, particularly the two successes of Loki and Deadpool & Wolverine, both of which are still fresh in audiences’ minds.

Is The Sentry Alioth and Was He a Multiversal Weapon?

The Void is also home to the powerful trans-temporal entity known as Alioth. Alioth guards the Void under the control of He Who Remains and has been featured in both Loki and Deadpool & Wolverine. He Who Remains describes Alioth as being created by the rifts in time and space caused by the Multiversal War fought between his variants. He Who Remains discovered Alioth’s existence, harnassed him, and used him to defeat his variants and end the Multiversal war.

Thunderbolts* was announced at San Diego Comic-Con 2022, the same time as Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars. Throughout its development, Thunderbolts* has always been positioned as the final film of Phase 5, making it an essential part of the larger Multiversal epic that the MCU has been developing. The plan might have been to reveal The Sentry and the Void as Alioth, with Thunderbolts* being the origin for how Alioth came to be despite taking place after Loki. The nature of time travel meant audiences were seeing parts of the larger narrative out of order, with the Multiversal war that was spread across time in space manifesting in the body of one person before being discovered by He Who Remains.

There is some credence to this in the comics. In New Avengers #9, The Void faces off and nearly destroys the combined forces of The Avengers, The X-Men, the Fantastic Four, The Inhumans, and the Illuminati. If the Void is powerful enough to take on all those heroes and nearly kill them, it isn’t out of the realm of possibility to think he could do it with various Kang variants, like Alioth. Alioth is powerful enough to even make a near-Omega-level mutant like Cassandra Nova fear. With all that laid out, it feels plausible to imagine Alioth and The Sentry are two sides of the same character.

Related

5 Major Ways the MCU Is Course Correcting in 2025

The MCU’s 2025 outlook looks promising. They have clearly noted some issues plaguing the franchise and are course-correcting in the following ways.

There are clues that The Sentry and The Void might be Alioth, or at least they might have some connection. Alioth, a big destructive force manifested as a monster, certainly has much in common with various depictions of The Void seen in Marvel Comics. The Thunderbolts* trailer sees the city of New York being consumed by a dark shadow draining all the color from the world, similar to how Alioth moves through the void and devours everything in its path. With Kang the Conqueror now out as the MCU’s big bad in favor of Doctor Doom and Avengers: The Kang Dynasty renamed Avengers: Doomsday, some elements might have changed.

The Sentry/The Void being connected to Alioth might still be an essential factor for the future of the MCU, as Doctor Doom could weaponize him or his power at least to destroy the Council of Kangs, clearing up that plotline teased in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. If The Sentry does not make it out of Thunderbolts*, that could also be key to setting up Doctor Doom’s arrival into the MCU, as the one being with the power strong enough to stop him is now off the table. This also suggests that Thunderbolts* could be vital to Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars.

How ‘Thunderbolts*’ Could Set Up ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ and The Multiverse Saga

The final shot in the trailer for Thunderbolts* shows the team walking into the black void after taking the city, likely sacrificing themselves to stop The Sentry. This could be the film’s climax, where this group of anti-heroes that the world looks down upon gives their life to save everyone, giving them a sense of internal redemption and for the rest of the world to view them as heroes. While the Thunderbolts think they are committing self-sacrifice, the movie might end with themselves awake in the Void at the End of Time in a strange mirror of the final scene in Captain America: The First Avenger.

Now, this ending might seem a little sad when one thinks about it. Taking characters who think so low of themselves and ending their story with them in a world of trash that has things thrown away might run counter to the idea the movie is trying to sell that these characters have value. But it also is somewhat thematically appropriate, as they now have a new world to protect, one that Deadpool & Wolverine has shown is still populated with individuals that the TVA has yet to save following their reform. It also sets the stage for the Thunderbolts team to play a role in Avengers: Doomsday.

Kevin Feige confirmed at San Diego Comic-Con that the characters in Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts*, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps would appear in Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars. Sam Wilson’s Captain America makes sense as he will lead a new Avengers while the Fantastic Four will likely arrive from their universe, but how do the Thunderbolts fit in? After all their new trailer points out, they shoot and punch people; what good would they do in a massive multiverse adventure?

Related

Every ‘Thunderbolts’ Member, Their Powers, and How They’re Connected

Here’s everything you need to know about the MCU’s ‘Thunderbolts’ team.

If the team is in the Void, they will likely cross paths with other heroes in the Multiverse story, similar to Thor crashing into the Guardians of the Galaxy in Avengers: Infinity War, allowing these two teams to collide. The Void is being used as the foundation for the MCU’s version of Battleworld from Secret Wars, with the Thunderbolts already in the world to interact with heroes who wind up in The Void and can fill characters up to speed.

However, if the characters don’t die, but they know that The Sentry’s powers somehow are connected to another dimension in time and space called The Void, that means the Thunderbolts are the only characters within the MCU sacred timeline not part of the TVA that are aware of this plane of existence. Deadpool and Wolverine are off on Earth-1005, and Loki sits on his throne at the center of reality. If Doctor Doom is coming to attack the MCU and possibly destroy it, the Thunderbolts would be the only characters that could tell characters like Captain America, Captain Marvel, Black Panther, and the rest that there is maybe one safe location in the Multiverse to hide out and regroup: The Void.

While the name Thunderbolts* might not have any ties to Thunderbolt Ross, aka The Red Hulk from Captain America: Brave New World, it seems more than likely that The Sentry’s villainous persona of The Void will be connected to the Void location teased in other MCU titles. That big multiverse connection certainly explains why Thunderbolts* is the final film of Phase 5 and could explain how this seemingly out-of-place film fits into the wider Multiverse Saga narrative and how this team of assassins and super soldiers will factor into Avengers: Doomsday. Thunderbolts* is releasing in theaters on May 2, 2025.