Marvel Studios Thunderbolts has gone through some turbulence in its efforts to make it to the big screen; however, with cameras now set to roll next April, some of the film’s stars have been a little more forthcoming in sharing their excitement for the film. Wyatt Russell, who will reprise his role as John Walker in the film, thinks director Jake Schreier has what it takes to bring out the best in the ensemble cast which includes Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Steven Yeun and David Harbour. Though Harbour has to complete work on Season 5 of Stranger Things before getting to work on Thunderbolts, he did recently talk with Screen Rant about the MCU project.
Thunderbolts will in many ways be a follow-up to 2021’s Black Widow. Three of the film’s main characters (Taskmaster, Red Guardian and Yelena) were featured in Black Widow and Thunderbolts will reunite Harbour’s Alexi with Pugh’s Yelena. Black Widow gave some insight into their shared past–not all of which was bright and happy–and Harbour teases that there’s more of that to come in Thunderbolts. “So they have a lot of unexplored history,” says the actor of Alexi and Yelena. “There’s a lot of details that the director, Jake, has gone into the great care of what their life was like in the Midwest when they were doing all that spy stuff. And then, a lot of that comes up in really fun, interesting, beautiful ways, which, like in the Black Widow movie came up with that song, American Pie. And there’s just a lot of complexity between me and Florence’s character, which I love,” he concluded.
Thunderbolts will mark the first time the two have interacted on screen since the death of Scarlett Johannson‘s Natasha Romanoff. That loss is sure to be central to at least some of the interaction between the two in the film, something that Harbour also teased. “And also they’re two people that… she can’t stand, but she needs some because she’s incomplete in a certain way that he may be able to help her with. I think that’s always so beautiful. Because I feel like our relationships are always so… Sometimes we don’t get to choose the people that complete us. The people that we really need. I think that they exemplify that in their own way. It will be fun to bring that to life in the movie.“
While their father-daughter relationship was contentious at best in Black Widow, it was obvious that not only did Alexi truly care for Yelena but also that part of her BIG personality certainly came from spending time with her larger-than-life surrogate father, the boastful Super Soldier from Russia. Whatever emotions they’ll have to process, they’ll have to do so quickly as their team will be faced with the daunting task of taking on Yeun’s Sentry when Thunderbolts hits theaters on July 25, 2025.
Source: Screen Rant
