Summary

Sebastian Stan is excited to reprise his role as The Winter Soldier in the upcoming Thunderbolts movie and praises the high quality of the MCU. Thunderbolts, set for release in 2025, will feature a diverse cast of heroes and antiheroes going on more dangerous missions than The Avengers. The plot and villain of Thunderbolts are still a mystery, but there are rumors that the team may face off against Sentry, a powerful superhero with a split personality.

Marvel star Sebastian Stan cannot wait to once again suit up as The Winter Soldier and do battle as part of the Thunderbolts. Speaking with Variety, the actor said he was “excited” to get back to the action of the MCU, and alluded to the recent box office and critical disappointments of the franchise reasoning that, because it has such a high “batting average” it becomes increasingly difficult to “land everything.” See what Stan had to say about his Thunderbolts return below…

“I’m excited. I’m going to go back basically in a month or so. I’ve missed it. It’s a great cast. The batting average is so high that it’s difficult to always land everything right away. It’s always been a great experience. With this one in particular, I think there’s a lot of good things.”

Now due for release in 2025, Thunderbolts is the next major Marvel team-up movie and will follow the titular group of heroes and antiheroes, who are usually tasked with far more deadly, and far more dangerous, missions than the likes of The Avengers. The group will include several familiar names, including Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Red Guardian (David Harbour), and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko).

Thunderbolts has had a tricky time getting to screens. The project has been in development since 2022, with filming scheduled to begin last year, before being paused amid the writers’ and actors’ strikes. Filming is now due to begin in the spring, with Thunderbolts, which was initially planned as part of the MCU’s Phase Five, now coming as part of Phase Six.

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Who Is the Villain in Thunderbolts?
Marvel Comics

While we know which characters will make up the titular Thunderbolts team, there is still a lot of mystery surrounding the plot of the movie and who the villain will be. It is now hotly rumored that Thunderbolts will see the group tackle Sentry, Marvel’s version of Superman, an all-powerful superhero who suffers from dissociative identity disorder and has two psyches living inside his head, one being the benevolent superhero Sentry and the other being the hostile supervillain Void.

The Walking Dead and Beef star Steven Yeun was originally signed on to play the role, but has sadly had to step away due to scheduling conflicts. The actor recently offered an explanation regarding why he will no longer feature in Thunderbolts saying…

“I think for me, time passing and things shifting kind of pulled me out of it. But Jake [Schreier], I know, is going to do an incredible job. I wanna do a Marvel movie… It took a lot of drafts on email to make sure that I conveyed the sincerity of how sorry I was to have to back out.”

Thunderbolts is also due to star Hollywood icon Harrison Ford as Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross. The Star Wars star will make his MCU debut in Captain America: Brave New World, with further rumors claiming he will also become the Red Hulk.

Directed by Jake Schreier, Thunderbolts is scheduled to be released on July 25, 2025. Sebastian Stan, meanwhile, can next be seen starring in the psychological thriller A Different Man.

Thunderbolts Writers Kurt Busiek , Eric Pearson Franchise Marvel