Thunderbolts‘ ‘Big’ Death Is So Obvious and Pointless

You cognize the aged proverb: if you get a ragtag radical of misfits together, someone’s gotta die. That’s precisely what happens successful Thunderbolts, but don’t fuss trying to conjecture which quality bites it. It’s been wide for truthful long, the full ordeal conscionable ends up being insulting.

About fractional an hr into Thunderbolts, during its overmuch marketed four-way combat betwixt four of its antiheroes, Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) kills Taskmster (Olga Kurylenko) by shooting her close successful the face.

It’s 1 of the worst-kept secrets of this movie, perchance of the MCU’s Multiverse Saga. For months, fans person speculated the once-mind controlled assassin would beryllium the 1 to shuffle disconnected this mortal coil. When it tin beryllium bothered to diagnostic her, selling has lone shown her successful the brawl betwixt her, Ghost, Yelena (Florence Pugh), and John Walker (Wyatt Russell); posters astir harvest her retired of the radical shots oregon don’t springiness her the decency of showing her face, arsenic is the lawsuit with John and Ghost. If that weren’t wide enough, she wasn’t listed among the formed being chaired over from this movie to Avengers: Doomsday.

The MCU’s Taskmaster that first debuted successful Black Widow wasn’t a one-to-one adaptation of Tony Masters, archetypal created successful the comics by David Micheline and George Perez successful 1980. That the movie kept the character’s photographic reflex powers but different rewrote the snarky mercenary into Antonia Dreykov, girl of the Red Room’s creator who was mind-controlled by her begetter aft Natasha bombed them some successful Budapest, was a neat (if semi-predictable) uncover that came excessively precocious successful the movie to respire similar the “Bucky was Winter Soldier” twist it was trying to evoke.

But Antonia wasn’t Masters, which rankled longtime fans of the comics mentation and earned her the rubric of 1 of the MCU’s worst quality adaptations to date. (For this to stick, unreal this franchise has perfectly brought each different quality to beingness and not twisted and reshaped them for their ain ends, up to and including respective of Taskmaster’s Thunderbolts costars.) Still, that she near the movie flying disconnected to information with Yelena and the different saved Widows near the doorway unfastened for her to return, perchance much akin to her comic publication counterpart. Pairing her with Yelena again and the likewise mind-controlled Bucky could’ve provided immoderate absorbing quality enactment too, right?

© Marvel Studios

Yeah, no. Thunderbolts only has Antonia connected manus to get got, and it’s the astir egregious lawsuit of atrocious booking successful MCU history. After unmasking to archer Yelena they’ve nary beef with each other, she gets utterly worked implicit by Ghost and Walker and not fixed a warring chance. It’s made worse erstwhile they proceed to loot her corpse for cogwheel and not really usage what they stole each that much, and each she gets is immoderate musings from Yelena aboriginal connected astir the “rough life” she had. It’s an unsatisfying, somewhat mean-spirited extremity to a quality that had country for betterment and besides undercuts the film’s cardinal thesis. This movie asks if its assembled baddies are worthy of 2nd chances, but doesn’t adjacent unreal to connection that question toward 1 of the biggest victims successful the semi-grounded country of the MCU.

Going by the film’s throughline, Taskmaster yet died due to the fact that having her astir excessively agelong would’ve undercut Yelena’s arc astir her ain acheronian past erstwhile idiosyncratic she helped prevention was throwing a shield and firing arrows not six feet distant from her. And that conscionable sucks, due to the fact that it feels similar a instrumentality to aged habits. Disposable villains utilized to beryllium 1 of Marvel’s top weaknesses, but implicit time, the villains started getting some much meat acknowledgment to bully acting and taking the clip to invest successful them.

Thunderbolts was announced backmost successful 2022, astatine a clip wherever the MCU was bringing backmost the villains it hadn’t killed disconnected done projects similar She-Hulk and Shang-Chi. Not each determination has been a winner, but these returns person provided immoderate other colour to its villain roster. It’s 1 happening to marque a sensible pivot from 1 baddie to a much salient one, and different to conscionable termination idiosyncratic for the involvement of it.

Well, RIP Antonia “Taskmaster” Dreykov (2021-2024). I’d accidental you had a bully run, but that implies anyone truly gave you the accidental to agelong your legs.

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