Is The Thunderbolts Trailer Teasing A Major MCU Retcon?

There’s always a fair amount of mystery surrounding a new Marvel project, but Thunderbolts — the franchise’s answer to stories like Suicide Squad — has been more secretive than most. Despite all the cloak and dagger, however, the film’s true villain has seemingly been revealed already. Back when Steven Yeun was set to star in the film, his Invincible collaborator Robert Kirkman let slip that the actor would be playing Sentry, a Superman-esque figure with a complex comic book history.

Salem’s Lot star Lewis Pullman has since taken over Yeun’s role, and he and Marvel have been keen to keep his identity under wraps. Initial trailers introduced Pullman simply as Bob, playing down his powers and withholding any mention of Sentry. For a while, it felt like Thunderbolts would save its big reveal until the film hit theaters in May. But its latest trailer, which debuted during this year’s Superbowl, just gave us our best look at Sentry yet.

The new Thunderbolts promo doesn’t make the connection between the anti-hero and his mild-mannered alter ego, depicting Pullman either in silhouette or just out of frame. Instead, it focuses on the threat that Sentry and his “void” powers present to the world; it might even be teasing a big retcon to the universe itself.

The newest Thunderbolts trailer kicks off amid a crisis, as a new, all-powerful figure is spreading a plague of darkness across New York. As Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) explains, the Avengers aren’t around to assist — and even if they were, they’d likely be no match for the evil Superman turning people into smudges of dust. Those familiar with the comics likely know exactly which character Thunderbolts is positioning as its villain. It’s not much of a stretch to connect “Bob” to Robert Reynolds, one of many comic characters who took a version of the Super Soldier Serum and gained incredible powers. His serum gave him the strength of “a million suns,” along with telepathy, molecular manipulation, and teleportation.

As Sentry, Robert was nigh-omnipotent, and he fought alongside the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. But his struggles with schizophrenia complicated his tenure as a superhero, and one of Robert’s suppressed identities manifested into a malevolent alter ego known as the Void. Naturally, he bore none of Sentry’s noble restraint, but was instead determined to destroy as many people as Sentry saved. Sentry, meanwhile, did everything in his power to keep his darker instincts in check, even going so far as to rewrite reality and suppress the entire world’s memories.

Not unlike Peter Parker’s predicament in Spider-Man: No Way Home, no one remembers that Sentry even exists. But this condition rarely remains permanent: powerful telepaths like Emma Frost have recovered suppressed memories of Sentry, as have his friends in the Fantastic Four. This produces a perpetual struggle between Sentry and the Void, with the former constantly finding new ways to suppress the evil entity. That struggle will definitely play a role in Thunderbolts as well, though there doesn’t seem to be a huge distinction between Sentry and the Void in the latest trailer.

There’s also the question of how far Thunderbolts will go in adapting such a complex character. Has Sentry, like his comics counterpart, been a part of the MCU this entire time? Have the world’s heroes just forgotten the role he played in saving it? There’s a chance that Sentry’s origin story could depict the events of No Way Home in reverse, but that could be a rather risky change to canon. Regardless, Thunderbolts is shaping up to be way more important to the MCU than anyone expected. Even if this Sentry is a new addition to the world, his presence and his powers will alter it forever.

Thunderbolts hits theaters on May 2.