20 Biggest Wasted Opportunities In The MCU
13. Taskmaster
Looking back, what sucks most about the loss of Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) is that she's actually quite a compelling figure in her debut feature, Black Widow.
An indomitable killing machine programmed like a supercomputer to study and best any fighter she crosses, the reveal that Taskmaster was actually the daughter of Black Widow's villain Dreykov (Ray Winstone) was quite powerful, and helped hammer home the film's themes of control and personal grief.
She also makes it out of the film alive, set up as a major part of the recent team-up effort Thunderbolts, which promised some added depth to a woman now free of her father's cruelty. Only, it never comes, because she's killed almost instantly in her second on-screen appearance, and that's that.
Though far removed from their comic counterpart, Taskmaster was nonetheless a compelling riff on a tried and tested formula, a character bursting with potential that would have surely enriched Thunderbolts for all its discussions of trauma, regret, and the futility of violence. Bummer.