I would have loved them to have tried and pull off the comic book ending of issue 1,that would have a good twist.

Yeah, someone made mention of the evil Captain America being on the team and I had to ask them which one they were talking about.

And not having Zemo and Songbird makes it not really feel like the Thunderbolts to me. Like making a first Avengers movie and not having Iron Man and Captain America.

This is hate simply for hates sake. Pure clickbait.

There's been umpteen thousand movies and stories where teams have similar powers. That's far and away the vast majority like 98% percent. From TMNT to Power Rangers, Suicide Squad etc... but lets now pretend it's a damning problem because Marvel.

Being king definetly has it's issues

The roster is a lot of super soldiers but I think this is a chance to tap into a more grounded avengers-esque team who are dealing with more human and/or espionage level threats.

You could also have fun with the fact that it’s obvious they don’t have any gods and armored warriors. They’re the B team for B level, yet still significant, threats that the Avengers would never bother with. They’re all also incredibly morally grey, so the govt won’t have issues with asking them to do certain things. No push back from a Cap type.

Really was the first thing I noticed is the diversity of skill sets. 3 super soldiers, 3 elite spies and one phase shifting soldier spy. This is a great team for battling against normys. (Normys = normal humans)
Let’s just say I expect them to recruit Abomination at least.
Also I don’t see how Zemo could end up being a part of the Thunderbolts when he was so against Super soldiers in Civil War. Maybe Zemo could be a villain for them to go up against.

This has been building for a long time and you say disappointment? everyone already knew who the Thunderbolts were going to be except you, by the way, I'm 100% sure this isn't the whole team and Zemo is the villain.

Josh aka Hamilton Parker aka Ruby Goldstone posting a headline graphic reading "They're all the same!"... Who says the man doesn't get irony? Bravo!

There's a theory going around that this is not-so-secretly a Black Widow (Yelena) sequel and that's why the team looks the way it does.

I posted this on r/MCUTheories, but I hope we only saw ONE Thunderbolts team.

So, Feige said something that got me thinking. He is talking about Julia Louis-Dreyfus' character, Contessa Valentina Allegra Fontaine, and calls out that she has an important role to the story.
"In this movie, [she is] responsible for everything that happens."

My theory is that the lineup presented at D23 is not the first, but second incarnation of the team. Fontaine is regretting putting Zemo in charge of a group of "untested agents." He has radicalized them and turned them into his team. It would be easy to eliminate them...except this team is masquerading as a group of heroes. Only John Walker remained true to the mission, leaving his defectors. The new mission is to take out the heroic "Thunderbolts" that went rogue.

This way, we get the government covert ops story AND the villains posing as heroes story. We can still introduce characters as the "untested agents" like Songbird, Atlas, Moonstone, Radioactive Man, etc. Of course, this also opens the door to recurring villainous MCU baddies like Batroc, Justin Hammer, The Tinkerer, and (if he is fooling She-Hulk) Abomination.

At the end, defeated, Zemo realizes that any attempt at doing good in this world is for naught. He gathers whatever members he can and runs off on the path toward building the Masters of Evil.

I think this group just needs Abomination. Every hero group needs a brute.


Valentina is general
Yelena is squad leader (though I think US Agent should be the leader, he still could be)
US Agent is second in command
Abomination is the muscle
Red Guardian is the comedic relief
Taskmaster is the martial arts expert/range attacker
Ghost is the tech person

Winter Soldier is completely miscast in this imo. Substitute Winter Soldier with Abomination and it's a decent team.

If I were choosing a roster for a first Thunderbolts movie at this point in the MCU I think I would go with something like Baron Zemo, Songbird, Ghost, Taskmaster, Ares, Abomination, Moonstone, and Zeke Stane.