Thunderbolts* is the best Marvel movie in years. That sentence is easier to write now that enough time has passed for the discourse to settle — the film arrived May 2, 2025 to modest box office numbers and enormous critical goodwill, and the asterisk in its title turned out to be the most honest thing Marvel has done in a decade.
Now available on Disney+, Thunderbolts* is worth revisiting (or discovering for the first time) as a case study in what the MCU can do when it stops trying to be everything at once.
What Is Thunderbolts* About?
The film assembles a team of morally compromised characters — antiheroes, ex-operatives, and one deeply troubled young man — under circumstances that are less “superhero team-up” and more “therapy session with explosions.” Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) leads the ensemble, alongside John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Taskmaster, Red Guardian (David Harbour), and Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) as the architect of the whole arrangement.
The “*” in the title is not a typo. It becomes central to the film’s plot in a way that retroactively makes the title brilliant. We won’t spoil it further than that — just know that Lewis Pullman’s character is the emotional core of the entire film and he delivers a performance that stands among the best in the MCU’s 35-film run.
Why It Works When Other MCU Films Haven’t
The film holds an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 93% audience score — the second-best audience reception of any MCU film. The reason is simple: it’s a movie about people rather than plot mechanics.
Thunderbolts* is genuinely interested in its characters. The team is assembled from the MCU’s bench of underused supporting players, and the script by Eric Pearson gives each of them something real to work through. The film’s themes — depression, guilt, the gap between what we’ve done and what we deserve — are handled with a directness that most superhero films avoid entirely.
Florence Pugh is as good as she’s ever been in the MCU. Lewis Pullman is a revelation. David Harbour provides the film’s comedy without undermining its emotional weight. This is a well-directed, well-acted film that happens to have superhero set pieces — not a set-piece delivery mechanism with character moments bolted on.
Why It Underperformed at the Box Office
Thunderbolts* grossed $382.4 million worldwide against a combined production and marketing budget of approximately $280 million — technically profitable but below the expectations Marvel and Disney had set. Kevin Feige attributed part of the underperformance to audience perception that they needed to have watched multiple Disney+ shows to understand the film. That perception wasn’t entirely wrong, but it also wasn’t fatal: the film works as a standalone for patient viewers.
The box office performance is the film’s reputation’s biggest obstacle and shouldn’t be. A movie being a modest commercial success doesn’t make it a lesser viewing experience, and on streaming, Thunderbolts* has the chance to find the audience it deserved.
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Do You Need to Have Watched the Disney+ Shows?
Ideally: watch Black Widow (2021) for Yelena and Red Guardian context. Helpful but not essential: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier for John Walker. The rest — Hawkeye, Ghost context from Ant-Man — is explained adequately within the film itself.
If you’ve watched nothing: you will be slightly lost on character backstories but the film’s emotional core is accessible regardless. Give it 20 minutes before deciding it’s not for you.
Where to Watch
Disney+ — Streaming now. Available in 4K HDR on supported devices.
Final Verdict
Thunderbolts* is the MCU film most worth revisiting in 2026. It was underseen in theaters, is better than its box office suggests, and contains at least two performances that deserve considerably more recognition than they received. The asterisk means something. Watch it to find out what.
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