Marvel Should Bring Back Taskmaster, But in a Radically Different Way

This article contains spoilers for Thunderbolts*.

All of the Thunderbolts have it rough, but none worse than Taskmaster. Less than 18 minutes into the film, during the first action set piece, Taskmaster gets shot in the head and therefore doesn’t get to participate in all the cathartic sharing that the others enjoy later in the movie.

However, Taskmaster’s actor Olga Kurylenko isn’t so sure the character’s truly gone. “The thing is with Marvel, you never know,” she told Deadline. “The superheroes die all the time, and they’re never dead… In one in one story, you disappear, suddenly you come back.”

Kurylenko is certainly right about the revolving door in the superhero afterlife, and she’s certainly right to suggest that fans would like to see Taskmaster come back, but she misses one thing. If Taskmaster does return, the character must be very, very different from the one that Kurylenko played.

Taskmaster has a rabid fan base, one that would likely mystify MCU fans. Sure, Taskmaster posed a formidable threat to Avenger Black Widow, as she could emulate the fighting style of Black Panther, Captain America, and other superheroes. But she largely served as a living manifestation of the red remaining in Natasha Romanoff’s ledger. The brooding figure said nothing, wore a ski mask in Black Widow, and died immediately in Thunderbolts*. Why would anyone care about her?

One need read only a handful of Marvel Comics to get an answer. In fact, just the character’s first appearances in 1980’s Avengers #195-196 get the point across. The final image of Avengers #195 is a gloriously-rendered splash page by penciler George Pérez and inker Jack Abel showing Wasp looking in terror at Taskmaster, holding the unconscious bodies of Ant-Man and Yellowjacket.

“My monikers Taskmaster, Shuggy, and I run a little operation,” declares the man born Tony Masters, in wonderfully overwritten dialogue by David Michelinie. “My schtick is teaching the teachers, an’ I’ve just decided that you an’ your sleepyhead partners here would make perfect visual aides for my next class. It’s one o’ my favorites, Dumplin’. I call it… Dismemberment 101!”

Decked in orange and blue (provided by colorist Ben Sean) and carrying weapons that recall other Avengers (eg, Captain America’s shield, Hawkeye‘s bow, Swordmaster’s blade), and staring out from a grinning skull mask, Taskmaster cuts an impressive figure. And in Avengers #196, we see how he can mimic the fighting style of anyone he sees, even possibly besting Captain America. It’s only through the advance programming of Jocasta (think Vision, but a lady) that Taskmaster gets distracted enough for Wasp to take him down.

In short, Taskmaster is a mouthy, arrogant, amoral jerk, and he’s an utter blast in all of his appearances. Across his many appearances, including those outside of comics—such as his turn as a jerky gym teacher in the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon series—Taskmaster has built up a strong following. And that following was thoroughly disappointed by the version in the MCU.

To be clear, the problem here isn’t with Kurylenko, or even the fact that the character is a woman. Toni Masters could work just as well as Tony Masters. No, the problem is that Black Widow took an arrogant mouthy jerk and turned him into a silent zombie, and gave the Taskmaster an awful costume to boot. When Ghost gunned down that version of Taskmaster, she did the world a favor.

Taskmaster can and should return to the MCU. He’s one of the great villains of the Marvel Universe and he has a fantastic design. But if Taskmaster does come back—as a man, woman, or anything in-between—the character must be closer to the comic book version we all love.