Thunderbolts won’t get the surprise team member I wanted

Thunderbolts* is easily one of the most anticipated Marvel movies of 2025, a crossover featuring a larger group of heroes than your usual MCU adventure. It’s the closest we get to seeing an Avengers movie that’s not about Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

The Thunderbolts team features former villains and antiheroes who have to team up. They first do it to survive, as some Marvel fans have already learned from the leaked Thunderbolts trailer. Then they’ll have to defend themselves, and maybe the world, against a greater threat. The same trailer tells us who the film’s real villain is and what the threats are.

But ever since Marvel announced Thunderbolts a few years ago, I wondered whether the studio revealed the entire roster or whether we’ll get a few surprises along the way. I had high hopes for a specific character to be part of the band eventually.

An insider now says that the beloved Marvel character will not be part of the Thunderbolts team. You might easily guess who it is, but I won’t confirm your suspicions until I tell you that Thunderbolts spoilers might follow below.

A few days ago, Marvel released and then pulled the clip it had prepared for its 85th anniversary. But the web was immediately filled with scenes and screenshots from it. The video contained images from some of the key MCU movies of the Infinity Saga but also scenes from upcoming Multiverse Saga attractions.

At the time, I pointed your attention to scenes that gave us a look at a partial Thunderbolts team in an elevator that matched a scene from the leaked trailer. Also, the anniversary clip featured Red Hulk (Harrison Ford). We’ll see the latter in Captain America: Brave New World in February, as he takes on Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie).

Marvel has rereleased the clip, which you’ll see at the end of this post. It seems to contain more footage than the version I first saw, but the Thunderbolts and Brave New World scenes are still in it.

So, what’s the connection between Marvel’s video and the surprise Thunderbolts team member? Well, MCU Insider Daniel Richtman said on X that Red Hulk is “100%” not in Thunderbolts.

Richtman reacted to a Variety story that said initially that Harrison Ford would play Red Hulk in Thunderbolts. Variety has corrected its story about Marvel’s anniversary clip, suggesting Richtman’s information might be correct.

Thunderbolts hits theaters in early May, therefore, after Captain America 4. That’s not enough to confirm the chronology of MCU events. The action in Thunderbolts could always happen before Brave New World or simultaneously.

What I’m getting at is that Red Hulk could always be a surprise addition to the team. After all, the team has the same name as Thaddeus Ross’s nickname, Thunderbolt.

I also thought that Val (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) might be working for President Ross in Thunderbolts, but that might not necessarily be true. She might have entered the private sector rather than staying with the CIA. That’s speculation based on a recent Thunderbolts plot leak.

Whether that leak is accurate or not, let’s remember that Val was working for the US government while she was recruiting the likes of Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and US Agent (Wyatt Russell). She was the head of the CIA in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Then again, the Thunderbolts team might have nothing to do with President Ross or Red Hulk. The same plot leak says the team’s name is based on Yelena’s soccer team from when she was a kid.

Also, remember there’s an asterisk in the Thunderbolts title, which might suggest that’s not the team’s actual name. One theory says we’re looking at the MCU’s Dark Avengers here, which would be the film’s real surprise.