Thunderbolts Trailer Teases What the Title Asterisk (Most Likely) Means

“Be careful who you assemble,” reads the tagline in the first trailer for Thunderbolts. On one hand, the statement tracks with the ramshackle—dare we say “Suicide Squad-esque”—nature of the trailer. The Thunderbolts trailer shows a group of down and out villains and losers, all with red in their ledger and all willing to kill one another, forced to work together. In fact, the entire start of the trailer consists of a comedy scene involving Black Widow standouts Red Guardian (David Harbour) and White Widow (Florence Pugh) having a less than auspicious reunion.

Yet, the most compelling part of the trailer comes at the end. After revealing the title and the Marvel Studios logo, an asterisk appears next to the word “Thunderbolts,” suggesting that we might not know the full story. Or, more accurately, the full title.

However, the trailer does give us a few hints on the team’s true identity. After all, the central beat of the trailer finds four characters—White Widow, USAgent (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko)—revealing that they’ve been sent on a mission by some other agent, which is where they find “Bob” (Lewis Pullman). Later, Bucky (Sebastian Stan) comes riding after them, presumably sent as well.

And then there’s a shot of five heroes walking into the office of CIA director La Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), which has more than a few than a few connections to a similar moment in The Avengers. In fact, it appears to happen in Stark Tower, which was renamed Avengers Tower after the events of that film.

In short, it seems that the asterisk in Thunderbolts means that the team are, in fact, Phase 5’s replacements for the Avengers. That tracks with the team’s comic book legacy. Created by writer Kurt Busiek, the first version of the Thunderbolts came to be in the wake of Marvel’s 1996 Onslaught storyline, in which a powerful villain seemingly killed the Fantastic Four and the Avengers. The Thunderbolts presented themselves as a new group of heroes to fill in the gap, but they were in fact longtime Avengers villains the Masters of Evil, looking to take advantage of their enemies’ absence.

A later version of the Thunderbolts were a team of villains brought together by Norman Osborn aka the Green Goblin, who had become a world hero and the Director of SHIELD after stopping the Skrulls in Secret Invasion (which was actually a big deal in the comics, unlike the nothing it was in the MCU). Led by Osborn in his Iron Patriot armor, these Thunderbolts were the new Avengers, albeit filled with bad guys standing in for heroes. Venom became Spider-Man, Bullseye was Hawkeye, Daken was Wolverine, and so on.

In short, the Thunderbolts have always existed in a space without the Avengers, often to nefarious ends. And the MCU as of now has no Avengers. The team that came together in Avengers: Endgame has scattered, as Iron Man and Black Widow both died and Captain America retired. New heroes are out there to take their place, including the new Captain America Sam Wilson and Shang-Chi, but outside of a few teases, no official team has been put together yet.

At the same time, we’ve seen Allegra working in the background to gather her own team. And if her actions in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever are any indication, Allegra has nothing good in mind. She could very much be channeling her inner Norman Osborn and creating her own Avengers, using that team’s goodwill for her own devious ends.

Who knows when the asterisk will be removed and the full title revealed. But until then, Avengers (or Dark Avengers, to use a title from the comics) is a pretty good guess.

Thunderbolts* hits theaters on May 2, 2025.