Cinema’s Most Prolific Soap Opera Gets a Reset
DIRECTOR: JAKE SCHREIER/2025
On the way home from Thunderbolts*, I had a realization: This is just a soap opera.
Maybe it’s because my sister mentioned Sebastian Stan played a recurring role on Gossip Girl or maybe it’s because the post-credits scene revealed—don’t worry, not a spoiler!—a rift in a longstanding relationship we will explore in the future. Family secrets! Long-lost siblings! Multiple personalities! Amnesia! Those are just the soap opera tropes featured in this film, and we’d be here much longer if we listed all the surprising returns of characters we thought dead since the start of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
This is the not first time I’ve compared a comic book adaptation daytime television, but something about this bunch of anti-heroes concretizes it for the entire MCU saga. This bunch includes Yelena (Florence Pugh) and Alexei/Red Guardian (David Harbour), the adoptive sister and father to Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow. In spite of their Soviet roots, they’re fighting alongside disgraced Captain America wannabe John Walker (Wyatt Russell). Also in tow: A cohort from Yelena’s childhood assassin training program, Antonia/Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and a space-shifting onetime villain to Ant-Man, Ava/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen). Pulling them together: CIA director and big tech mogul Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who keeps them busy on “cleanup” jobs around the world. But their newest job is unthinkable: working as a team. After stumbling into a conspiracy, their shoddy alliance catches the attention of now-Congressman Bucky/Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), crosses paths of the winsome but enigmatic Bob (Lewis Pullman, though not playing the same Bob as last time), and may be the only one that can save the day.
Thunderbolts* may not be a game-changer for superhero movies or for the MCU, but it does feel like a reset in the right direction.
As I’ve never been a daytime soap fan, I’ve often wondered how these series find new fans with decades of drama preceding this week’s stories. Aside from Bucky, all of the Thunderbolts were introduced in more recent projects: 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp, 2021’s Black Widow, and the 2021 series Falcon and the Winter Soldier. That’s still more than nine hours of homework built on top of earlier adventures from Captain America, the Winter Soldier, and Black Widow. To its credit, Thunderbolts* stays light on its feet even with that historical weight, avoiding the pitfall of Captain America: Brave New World, which bogged its civic-minded ideas down in exposition and recaps of the less-beloved Eternals and forgettable The Incredible Hulk. Of its two hours and change, only the change feels superfluous, and the two hours prioritizes character and comedy over advertising the next installment, the commonest pitfall of the post-Endgame MCU.
Also like a soap opera, this saga is best when focusing on the present moment instead carrying the past’s burdens or the future’s plans. Perhaps this is why for the first time in seven years my Gen Z sister suggested a theatrical viewing because she heard Thunderbolts* was more like “old Marvel.” Though “old Marvel” had its slop, its best chapters kept focus on one idea, such as Guardians of the Galaxy and the Magic of Friendship, Black Panther and the Power of Legacy, or Thor and the Long-Term Impact of a Dysfunctional Family. Now we have Thunderbolts and the Dangers of Depression, which gives its many stars a surprising amount of runway to explore their dramatic chops. Stan continues to steady this franchise as a never-too-mopey-just-sardonic-enough sad boy, Pugh is bringing the new energy it needs, and still Pullman almost steals the movie from them as his own new brand of sad boy. Without spoiling the plot (which isn’t predictable thanks to a fun and misleading marketing champaign), the script brings in opportunities for them to reflect on their life stories and uses their powers to literalize their mental health, both in ways only possible in a superhero story. Though this has been a discussion point for MCU heroes before (even explicitly in Iron Man 3), this is probably the only title aside from the series WandaVision that has balanced comedy and drama so well. And if we’re talking comedy, it would be a crime not to mention Marvel finally finds a real use for Louis-Dreyfus. Valentina is her take on Miranda Priestly, both antagonist and consistent comic relief. She may be the best reflection to real-life corruption in Washington, but she’s also a delight torturing Geraldine Viswanathan’s ambitious assistant.
Another soap opera strategy at play? The reset. Yes, Thunderbolts* features a team fighting their way through yet another battle in New York City, but a pit stop in the scenic Southwest and a Son Lux soundtrack go a long way to giving it a fresh coat of paint. (As does a director with a point of view like Jake Schreier, who featured Son Lux on the soundtrack to his previous feature Paper Towns as well.) TBD on if releasing audiences from almost two decades of history will invite new fans in. The near-empty theater I saw it in its second Saturday in release wasn’t promising, but my sister said she’d watch it again even with whispered explainers she needed to keep up. Thunderbolts* may not be a game-changer for superhero movies or for the MCU, but it does feel like a reset in the right direction.