MCU Phase 4: Predicting Every Major Character That Will Join
17. Thunderbolts
Marvel Comics
First Appearance: The Incredible Hulk #449
If you can't beat them, join them... is what Marvel would be saying if DC's Suicide Squad was any good. But it wasn't, and so the torch falls to Marvel to do something intuitive with the Dirty Dozen premise Warner Bros. so horrendously squandered in a sea of green, purple and Adidas product placement.
For all intents and purposes the Thunderbolts, a team created by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley, are Marvel's equivalent of DC's Task Force X. They're a group of villains assembled to do the dirty work the heroes can't do, and with that in mind, it's easy to see Marvel making the team a feature in the future. What villains will appear is a slightly trickier question, but the House of Ideas aren't exactly short on options, with Michael Keaton's Vulture an obvious contender for a part in any potential Thunderbolts film.
There are countless other characters to include in this case, and while DC have beaten Marvel to the punch when it comes to their bad-guy ensemble, there's no reason why they too can't visit the concept later down the line.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
