Aside from Tony Stark’s badboy status, the Avengers haven’t really had a dark side. Sure, every character has had their sketchy moments and pasts, but for the most part, they were on the right track when we met them. Black Widow had her “red ledger” to contend with, Steve Rogers alluded to “compromises” during WWII that he wasn’t too keen on, but overall the Avengers were a pretty clean living bunch. Almost too clean. That’s where the Lightning strikes come on in.
During the D23 panel, the recently announced Marvel Cinematic Universe movie confirmed who would make up the titular team. And this roster is stacked with acumen. Call them the anti-Avengers. Or, more appropriately, The Suicide Squad of the MCU. It’s ironic that Marvel is following up on an idea from DC this time around. The film follows the adventures of Yelena Belova/Black Widow (Florence Pugh), Red Guardian (David Harbour), the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), US Agent (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Task Master (Olga Kurylenko) and Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss).
It’s a cast of characters who just bleed antihero. All they need to top it off is a Deadpool appearance. Merc with a mouth to the side, Lightning strikes will show us the shadowy reflection of the Avengers based on the character selection.
Thunderbolts’ The Russian Spies
At the head of the Thunderbolts is Yelena Belova, the new Black Widow who takes the place of the late Scarlett Johansson. Excellently portrayed by Florence Pugh, Belova is a former Black Widow hit man who last appeared in Disney+’s Hawkeye, stealing every scene she graced. She Was A Little Lonely In Her MCU Debut Black Widow by co-star The Red Guardian of David Harbour, the Soviet Union’s response to Captain America. The pair is made up in part of a family of Russian spies who live in the United States and hide in plain sight.
Black Widow and Red Guardian are prototypical good guys that you just can’t trust completely. Black Widow is a cunning spy and assassin. At one point she lived to deceive and eliminate targets. And David Harbour’s Red Guardian is just a big, unpredictable goon and lunkhead. This dynamic is perfect for the task force that plays outside the rules.
The soldiers of the group
If we put the spies aside, we’ll get to the soldiers. Winter Soldier and US Agent are perfect recruits for this group of misfits. Both have dark, tragic pasts that have invaded their lives. We know the story of Bucky Barnes (Winter Soldier) well. Designated “fist of Hydra” for 70 years, Barnes murdered anyone who challenged the hidden organization’s plans of world domination. Of course he has fought the Avengers several times and hopefully he will rejoin the team in MCU Phase 5but he just doesn’t quite fit the blood on his hands and his go-it-alone mentality.
John Walker, aka US Agent, is just a full fledged loose cannon. We saw this to deadly results in the Disney+ series Falcon and the winter soldier, where Walker, donning the Captain America character, took off a man’s head with Cap’s shield. Walker was jacked up on Super Solider Serum, soaked up his latent anger and rammed it to the surface. Deep down, Walker means well, but between the serum and his already intense personality, it can be hard to contain him. Definitely not prime Avengers material, but perfect for the Thunderbolts.
The two will also create tension between teams thanks to a vicious two-on-one battle with Winter Soldier and Falcon taking on Walker. Walker got a messy broken arm in the fight and probably doesn’t have good feelings towards Barnes.
The creepy lightning bolts
Before Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness, Marvel hadn’t really explored the horror side of things, although they did deal with two characters in particular. Ghost, the antagonist of Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Taskmaster, the skull-faced stalker from Black Widow, were as close as the MCU scary came. Ghost has the ability to make himself invisible thanks to a Quantum Realm accident and pulls a Star Wars-like white hood and glowing mask with red eyes. She was recruited by SHIELD for this ability, but was also exploited in the process.
Taskmaster has the ability to copy each combatant’s fighting style and also gives us the creeps. She really appears out of nowhere, hacking others with a sword and shield, brainwashed and relentless in her, ahem, job. She also came from a tragic place, used as a puppet by Dreykov and the Red Chamber to amplify the former’s twisted ego.
And let’s not forget Louis-Dreyfuss’ morally questionable manager/Nick Fury of the group in Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. Anyone who willingly puts this team together clearly thrives on chaos.
While this Dirty Dozen storyline is nothing special, it is certainly a breath of fresh air for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Their characters have leaned too far toward goody-two-shoes for too long. It’s time to darken things in the MCU, and Lightning strikes will hopefully do that in 2024.