Thunderbolts* Writer Reveals Who the Original Villain Almost Was and Other Marvel Secrets

This article contains THUNDERBOLTS* SPOILERS.

Back in 2009, a still-nascent Marvel Studios launched the Marvel Writers Program in which the studio selected a small group of promising new screenwriters to literally sit in the company’s offices for a year and develop different projects based on the vast Marvel canon. Some of the scribes who toiled in the program went on to become successful screenwriters in their own right for Marvel and other properties. One of them is Eric Pearson.

Some 15 years after launching his career with Marvel, Pearson has co-written (with Joanna Calo) the latest MCU entry, Thunderbolts* and is a credited writer on The Fantastic Four: First Steps. He also wrote the screenplay for Black Widow (2021), co-wrote Thor: Ragnarok (2017), and has contributed to films like Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, Ant-Man, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and the still-unproduced Blade. Pearson’s Marvel resume also includes a stint as story editor on the Agent Carter TV series and writing four of the Marvel One-Shots short films.

Now that Thunderbolts* is out (and yes, there are spoilers ahead), Pearson is free to talk about the film’s development, including the fact that the movie’s main superpowered threat, Bob/Sentry/Void (Lewis Pullman), wasn’t originally part of the mix.

“Earlier drafts had John Walker [Wyatt Russell’s character] … turning into this monster,” Pearson tells us in a candid sit-down, “and they can’t beat him in a fight, and they have to kind of make this emotional connection to bring him back to Earth.”

Pearson also reveals that another Ant-Man character in addition to Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) was in Thunderbolts* for a while, what he’d like to see happen with the team going forward, and why he still loves the Iron Fist movie he wrote years ago, plus more.

You got your start with Marvel very early, through the writers’ program they had at the time, correct?

2010, yeah, I was on the verge of having to move back home and they gave me a job and thank God for that. They’d probably been a studio for four years and then I slid in just at the right time.

How’d you get hooked up with the writer’s program?

I don’t even remember. I had an agent, but I wasn’t really booking jobs. You know, when you’re a struggling screenwriter, all you do is write your own stuff and hope it connects with people. The spec market had kind of been dying, but my stuff had gone around and [Marvel] got their hands on it and said, come in and pitch and meet Kevin [Feige], and I remember it was seven pitches over many months before Kevin’s time freed up to meet. And that was it.

Was there anything you wrote in those early days for Marvel that didn’t come to fruition?

Oh sure, all of it, but they’re all irrelevant now. I wrote a screenplay for Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers, that was a lot more grounded. It was more an alien crash movie and she gets accidentally empowered all on Earth, But by the time they were doing a Carol Danvers movie, two Avengers movies had happened, aliens had invaded Earth, and the shock and awe of mine was much too small for the world as it was.

I also wrote a Luke Cage movie [and] an Iron Fist movie. I really liked the Iron Fist one because it was called The Book of the Iron Fist, and it was 10 chapters all out of order. Davos, the villain, had a chapter that was entirely his story from his perspective, and there was a fully animated chapter and I always thought that was really cool. That was probably the most fun I had mixing stuff up. So yeah, I would have loved to see it all get done, but, you know, it’s not my universe.

Your first produced pieces were the Marvel One-Shots. Why do you think those petered out, and does anyone ever campaign to bring them back?

People campaign all the time. I think that’s a fiscally responsible thing. The original goal was to see if there could be short films in front of the movies like Pixar does, they will have a great three-to-eight-minute short film in front of all their features. Plus we decided to test it when there was still a big Blu-ray market, and I think there’s not much of a Blu-ray market anymore. I think that also the live-action element of these made them a lot harder to produce.

But now that there’s streaming, I’d love to see more things like that great Werewolf by Night Halloween special. It wasn’t an episode of TV. It wasn’t quite a movie. It was kind of just its own thing, and super fun and creative and awesome. So I don’t think the One-Shots can come back as shorts again… but I think that there could be something done on the Marvel TV side of things.

Was it a natural thing for you to segue right into Thunderbolts* since it is in many ways a sequel to Black Widow?

It was my idea. They weren’t planning to do a Thunderbolts movie. But I brought them this thing and I had two eyes so I could see how amazing Florence Pugh was, and how fun Yelena Belova was. I could see that there was great chemistry with her and David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov, and also that just Florence is such a star and such an incredible actor with this great depth.

I also love taking the kind of—how do I say this?—the less shiny characters, and she, if you really look at her character, there’s so much turmoil. I also really wanted to avoid Suicide Squad, because there have been two Suicide Squad movies recently. I really didn’t want to tell that story again because I think audiences would say, “Oh, it’s just Amanda Waller putting together the Suicide Squad, except it’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Valentina, who’s doing it.” I needed a different plot because we’ve seen that too much. So it really clicked with the idea that Valentina’s shredding evidence and they are human evidence, and then thinking about that on an emotional side where Yelena is just trying to find her place in the world.

Looking at the other characters that I had, we weren’t talking about villainous evil people. My big touchstone was The Breakfast Club. These are losers. They are emotionally sensitive outcasts, a lot of them had intentions to be good or weren’t even allowed to develop their own intentions before circumstances forced them down a path. So they’re all grouped together with that and Yelena was the perfect kind of leader to lead them all on that heroic arc of “our past is an anchor, but we can cut it loose and move forward and be better as we support one another.”

Were there discussions about who would make it onto the team besides Yelena and Alexei?

John Walker was always in, Ghost was always in, Taskmaster was in. There was a period where Bill Foster (played by Laurence Fishburne in Ant-Man and the Wasp) was involved as well, just through his connection to Ava. It was maybe not totally a supporting role, but bigger than a cameo, and he was going to have his Goliath moment which was going to be really fun. It didn’t work out for reasons I can’t remember.

Bucky [Sebastian Stan] was not in the first couple drafts and then got worked in where he’s worked through it a lot more and had a bit of an elder statesman feel that was really valuable for just the organization of the feral cats that are the Thunderbolts. They’re trying to do the right thing and sometimes you just need the person who’s like, “I know how to be a hero, just make this decision and come with me.” Yelena’s journey is very emotional and her functional hero knowledge is still at the nascent stage, so having Bucky there to be like “these are the moves we need to make,” that was helpful.

Jake Schreier has said he was interested in having Man-Thing show up, and there was sort of a fan surge to get Daniel Brühl‘s Zemo in there. Was any of that on the table at some point?

We talked about Man-Thing. Jake did love Man-Thing, and I love Man-Thing too. The discussion always was like, yes, we want this to happen as long as it doesn’t break the story we’re trying to tell. And the story we’re trying to tell is about these people who have been told they’re not worth anything, they’re being disposed of, and them forming a support group to be like, “No, that’s bullshit, we’re better than that, no one deserves to be treated like this, we have greater ambitions and dreams and aspirations and with each other’s support and love we can get there.” So it was hard to slip in Man-Thing, this giant moss monster, because what was Valentina doing with Man-Thing?

Baron Zemo was in prison and I did write at least a tag or something where there was a bit about who’s behind it all, and it was Zemo pulling the strings, but it felt like a forced Keyser Soze moment. It felt like he should either be in there or not be in there, and it was always kind of this story about this band of antiheroes, and we can’t break that just to throw in someone else from the comics.

Was the Sentry always the main threat and how was the Void developed as this metaphor for depression and mental illness?

I’d say for the first two or three drafts, there was sort of a Red Hulk-ish thing where Valentina was manipulating John Walker and told him that his super serum was going bad and he needed more injections. So he was beholden to her because she was giving him this stuff. What he didn’t know is that she had essentially planted a Hulk bomb in his heart that she could turn on if ever she needed to create chaos or a giant destructive event. So earlier drafts had John Walker… turning into this monster, and they can’t beat him in a fight, and they have to kind of make the emotional connection to bring him back to Earth. But it felt like another “sun’s getting real low” moment, which has been done before. We tried it a couple of times and it didn’t work.

And then, thank God for the Marvel Writers Program, because I’d read about the Sentry in 2011 when I was there, and I was like, “Wait, wasn’t there a guy who was basically Superman with Satan as his alter ego?” I went back and read some and I was like, yeah, this is pure good and pure evil. And I thought instead of just pure good—as vague as that is—it’s more about self-esteem and heroic ambition and benevolence, and then the flip side is about self-loathing and depression and isolation and loneliness. That’s our characters’ arcs all combined in a person that they can’t beat, which was perfect. As far as the memory loss element of the Sentry from the comics, we didn’t do it exactly the same because the comic book idea is “I’ve existed forever and I’m so powerful that I stopped you all from remembering me so I could save you from me.” That was too big of an idea for this movie.

Now, as far as the second part of your question about the Void space, the visual component was really Jake Schreier all the way. My goal was always, even when it was John Walker as the monster, to end this Marvel movie with a hug. They can have this big fight and it’s not going to matter, but if they emotionally connect, that’s the power of these heroes, so they’re going to hug him and make him feel not alone and that’s going to save the world.

But Jake really brought the idea of these Being John Malkovich rooms that were like a block chain of trauma, and that really helped because I was struggling with just kind of a general ethereal feel. You’d look one way and there’s your mom yelling at you, and then you look the other way and there’s you peeing your pants in class. It was like every horrible memory you’ve ever had kind of mashed together and it was hard to imagine. So Jake’s maze of trauma really helped ground it and make it more palatable, cool, and understandable.

You did not write the post-credits scene (in which the Thunderbolts, now known as the New Avengers, witness the Fantastic Four’s ship coming through an interdimensional portal). Did you know what the last scene would be while you were working on The Fantastic Four: First Steps?

No, Thunderbolts* had just started shooting when I was in the room writing Fantastic Four. They couldn’t have seemed farther away from each other at the time. Then they told me that that was going to be the moment in the tag. And I’m super jealous of the tag [laughs]. It’s a great scene. Don’t quote me on this, because I don’t know anything, but if you were to tell me that the first thing you see in Avengers: Doomsday is that ship coming down and the Thunderbolts meet them, that’s a scene I want to see. I don’t know if it happens—I can’t stress that enough—but I’m excited for the possibilities the same way you are.

What’s your opinion on what the New Avengers’ role could be going forward?

I think they’re right where they need to be. As I told you, there was no plan to do a Thunderbolts movie, and I brought them this thing and when I got my pitch right, it was very, very close to the movie that you have now, right up to the moment where Yelena comes up behind Valentina in front of all the cameras and says, “You know, you’re working for us now? We own you.” Valentina originally introduced them as the Thunderbolts, and at the end of the pitch, Kevin was like, “I think she should call them the New Avengers.” And I was like, oh, okay, I assume you have a plan for that. But also that was the only thing he told me to do, and I was like, “Great, I can go write this movie and the New Avengers are your problem.”

But I think they’re perfect where they are. They’re the Avengers with a Z, which is a great idea—they’re this off-brand thing and even though they’ve been accepted, it doesn’t mean they’re happy. They’re still annoyed, they’re still undervalued. It’s the perfect place for them, and I don’t ever want the Thunderbolts by any name to stop being the Thunderbolts. They’re whining, complaining, they’re probably going to be 30 minutes late to the fight, but they’re going to figure out some way to get it done in the end, even though they’re some of the weakest superpowered people in the whole universe. Their heart, their cleverness, and their willingness to be brave enough to walk into the expanding shadow of death are their real powers.

Another Marvel project you’ve worked on is Blade. Let me be blunt: What the hell is the problem there?

I can’t talk about that one. I’m sorry. There are a million things that I want to tell everyone, but I can’t say a single one of them.

You’ve been with Marvel now for 15 years. How has the development process changed?

It’s always kind of been the same. You’re sitting there in a windowless fluorescent-lit room with a whole bunch of cool art on the walls, and you’re just kind of grinding. I think there was a period where there was so much stuff happening that it felt a little bit spread thin. But since I’ve been back in there, it’s felt like they’re trying to just really focus on the projects that are coming up in a really smart way. And for me, it is weird how much I enjoy being in those windowless conference rooms with all the cool art on the wall, just talking about story.

It’s still a creative human process, so different people in different rooms are talking about different things with different tastes. You deal with budget and studio mandates and “this movie is going to use that character, so you can’t.” You deal with that as it comes up, but mostly you’re in there just trying to tell the best story. Then as you work with these people and get on the same page, you get these little gifts—I remember writing Fantastic Four and we’re coming up with these ideas and then about a week later there’s all new Ryan Meinerding art on the wall of the idea that you just talked about. You’re like, wow, I can’t believe I get to see this version of it.

What can you say about Fantastic Four: First Steps?

I think that I was kind of instrumental in restructuring the beginning and designing the third act, which I’m really proud of because that was complicated. I feel like I contributed in a way that makes me proud.

Now that they’re approaching an endpoint with Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, have they asked you to come up with pitches for 2028 or beyond?

I’m supposed to go in sometime in the next two or three [months] because I think they’re starting to arrange some furniture for what’s next. I’ve heard stuff about Doomsday and Secret Wars, but that was like three months ago and it could be all changed. The important thing when it comes to story for me is just like, think about Infinity War and Endgame. If you’re going to do a story right after Infinity War, and you don’t address the fact that half the universe disappeared, then your story is worthless. So I have not gotten the full download of what’s happening to prepare for how it all changes after this. I hope that that happens soon, but there’s no guarantees.

Thunderbolts* is in theaters now.