“Thunderbolts* ”cast and character guide: Meet the A-list talent of Marvel’s B-team

Key Points

• Thunderbolts* brings together some of the franchise’s less-savory heroes, including Florence Pugh’s Yelena and Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes.

• It marks the MCU debuts of Lewis Pullman and Geraldine Viswanathan.

• The film, helmed by Beef director Jake Schreier, hits theaters and IMAX on May 2.

With Thunderbolts*, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is allowing itself a detour into that murky space separating good and evil. Every comic book universe needs its anti-heroes, after all.

First announced in 2022, the feature-length team-up brings together some of the franchise’s pricklier characters as they’re, per a synopsis, “caught in a deadly trap by Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and forced into a dangerous mission that could bring them redemption if they unite as a team.”

The would-be team is comprised of Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes, David Harbour’s Red Guardian, Hannah John-Kamen’s Ghost, Wyatt Russell’s John Walker, and Olga Kurylenko’s Taskmaster, all of whom have been a thorn in the side of the Avengers at some point.

Speaking with EW in 2023, Marvel head Kevin Feige teased the fun of building a superhero movie around characters who are “barely heroes,” saying, “None of them would consider themselves heroes. When your de facto leader is Bucky Barnes, that’s sort of all you need to know.”

While we’re sure Jake Schreier’s film has some surprises in store, including a potential appearance from Harrison Ford’s “Thunderbolt” Ross, we’re keeping our Thunderbolts* cast and character guide about the anti-heroes we know we’ll see on screen. That includes the appearance of a brand new character, Lewis Pullman’s mysterious Bob, a.k.a. Sentry, a.k.a. Void.

Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova

English actress (and budding cooking show host) Florence Pugh drew early raves for her roles in Lady MacBeth (2016) and Midsommar (2019) before scoring an Academy Award nomination for her heartbreaking turn as Amy in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women (2019). Since then, the actress has been a box office powerhouse, appearing in big-budget fare like Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023) and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two (2024).

This will be Pugh’s third round as Yelena, an assassin and adoptive sister of Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff. The character first showed up in the Johansson-led Black Widow (2021), then appeared in the 2021 Hawkeye Disney+ series seeking revenge for her sister’s death.

Surrounded by the Thunderbolts* cast in Entertainment Weekly‘s Comic-Con video suite last year, Pugh said what excited her most about the film was the chance to elaborate upon the father-daughter relationship Yelena shares with Harbour’s Red Guardian.

“David and I, in the first movie, as much as we possibly could, squeezed as much as we could out of the time that we had together,” Pugh said. “Knowing that we were both coming back to do any version of a second movie, there was no way that we couldn’t jump into it further and go where these people are in the state of their lives right now.”

She continued, “Purely because of what [director] Jake [Schreier] wanted to make and the story that we were allowed to do, we were also, as characters that are hugely complex and very difficult to live alongside one another, able to go into a very bizarre but pure and human father-daughter relationship that I was so grateful to be able to do, especially with an actor like David.”

Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier

Sebastian Stan has come a long way since his days playing Carter Baizen on Gossip Girl (2007–2010), having developed a reputation for immersing himself in risky roles. In 2024, for example, he played a prickly actor with neurofibromatosis in the brilliant A Different Man, as well as current U.S. President Donald Trump in Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice. The risks paid off — Stan was nominated for an Oscar for the latter, and won both a Silver Bear and a Golden Globe for the former.

Stan has been playing Bucky Barnes, a.k.a. the Winter Soldier, for nearly 15 years now. After debuting in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger, Bucky has served as both a hero and villain in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), and Captain America: Brave New World (2025), not to mention the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021) and assorted cameos.

In Thunderbolts*, Stan’s Bucky rather fittingly gets to occupy the gray area between good and evil. “I think he sort of is surprised by how much of a kinship he feels with everyone,” Stan told EW during our Comic-Con panel. “It’s an odd pairing, but it’s also a really nice for him as a character in terms of the direction we’re taking him.”

Hannah John-Kamen as Ghost

One of Hannah John-Kamen’s first roles was in the second-ever episode of the now-inescapable Black Mirror (2011), an auspicious start. She would return to the sci-fi anthology for another installment in 2016, the same year she appeared on HBO’s Game of Thrones. Other notable projects include Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One (2018) and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021), as well as the Canadian series Killjoy (2015–2019).

The last time we saw Ghost, a stealth operative who requires quantum energy to survive, was in 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp, the end of which found her fighting for her life.

“I didn’t actually know even in the middle of Ant-Man where Ghost was going to go,” John-Kamen told EW last year. “[We] left her in this very vulnerable, fighting-for-her-life, always-in-constant-pain place, and in this movie we find her in control of that. So it’s given me the power and Ghost the power to discover who she is, what she is around others, and how she plays — if she plays — with others.”

David Harbour as Red Guardian

David Harbour’s been a working actor since the late ’90s, when he was nominated for a Tony for his turn in Broadway’s 1999 revival of The Rainmaker. His career took on a new dimension, however, after he was cast as the gruff, heroic Jim Hopper on Netflix’s Stranger Things (2016–present), a role that scored him nominations for two Primetime Emmys and one Golden Globe. Since then, he’s led multiple films, including Hellboy (2019), Violent Night (2022), and Gran Turismo (2023).

Thunderbolts* marks his second turn as Red Guardian, a.k.a. Alexei Andreovitch Shostakov, a booze-addled super soldier and surrogate father figure to Natasha Romanoff and Yelena Belova.

“I don’t think Alexei’s in the best place, and there’s a bit of an estrangement happening,” Harbour told EW during our Thunderbolts* panel. “Part of the film is — for a lot of these characters, not to get too deep on it — but it deals a little bit with mental illness and self-hatred, for sure, and the tripping over yourself. Part of what this family dynamic is about is overcoming these things in themselves to unlock who they really are as people.”

Wyatt Russell as John Walker/U.S. Agent

A former professional hockey player, Wyatt Russell first turned heads in comedies like 22 Jump Street (2014) and Everybody Wants Some (2016). And while the actor always brings a playfulness to his roles, he’s graduated to leading turns in films like Nightswim (2024) and series like Under the Banner of Heaven (2022) and Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023), the latter of which he starred in alongside his dad, Kurt Russell.

Russell’s John Walker was first introduced in The Falcon and Winter Soldier (2021) as a former Army captain hand-selected by the U.S. government to be the successor to Captain America. The pressure proved too much to handle, however, and Walker soon compromised his crime-fighting career by ingesting the Super Soldier Serum and committing a public act of violence.

As the trailer depicts, the shame of his past follows him into Thunderbolts*, with the character wincing over bad press about him in the newspaper. Speaking with EW at Comic-Con last year, he emphasized the “inner workings that we were able to create with the characters.”

He cracked, “Go for the kicks, stay for the emotional complexity and the mental health issues.”

Olga Kurylenko as Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster

Ukrainian-born French actress Olga Kurylenko has worked with an impressive array of boundary-pushing filmmakers, including Terrence Malick (To the Wonder), Martin McDonagh (Seven Psychopaths), Armando Iannucci (The Death of Stalin), and Terry Gilliam (The Man Who Killed Don Quixote). She’s likely best known, however, as “Bond girl” Camille Montes in 2008’s Quantum of Solace.

Kurylenko’s Taskmaster, a.k.a. Antonia Dreykov, was introduced in Black Widow as a brainwashed agent of the Red Room capable of mimicking the combat styles of her opponents. At the end of Black Widow, Natasha slipped Antonia an antidote that neutralized the mind-control agent utilized by the Red Room.

Lewis Pullman as Bob/Sentry/Void

The son of actor Bill Pullman, Lewis Pullman built a name for himself in films like The Strangers: Prey at Night (2018) and Top Gun: Maverick (2022) before taking lead roles in series such as Outer Range (2022–2024) and Lessons in Chemistry (2023), the latter of which landed him a Primetime Emmy nomination.

Pullman’s mysterious character is new to the MCU. As such, the actor’s been particularly tight-lipped about it.

“All I’ll say is that everyone has their own nicknames and Bob is not his only name, as Lewis is not my only name,” he told EW at Comic-Con last year.

We do, however, know the character’s many names, which include Bob, Sentry, and the Void. Confused? Check out our explainer.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine

Julia Louis-Dreyfus has won 11 Primetime Emmys and a Golden Globe for playing two of television’s most iconic characters: Elaine Benes on Seinfeld (1990–1998) and Selina Meyer on Veep (2012–2019). Lately, Louis-Dreyfus has been appearing in more films, including Nicole Holofcener’s You Hurt My Feelings (2023) and the offbeat fantasy Tuesday (2023).

Louis-Dreyfus’ Valentina Allegra de Fontaine has been lurking around the MCU for years now, turning from a shady behind-the-scenes operative to the head of the CIA. If you’ve found her a frustrating presence, rest assured that Thunderbolts* will bring some clarity to the character.

Related: Julia Louis-Dreyfus teases the action in Marvel’s Thunderbolts: ‘I did my share of kicking ass’

“You’re going to see her entire plan unfold,” she told EW in December, describing Valentina as a “user of anti-heroes” who “fancies herself a bit of a puppet master.” She teases, though, that while she sees herself as the leader of the Thunderbolts, the others may not “see her as such.”

With a laugh, she summed up her character thusly: “Her intentions aren’t necessarily pure. You’ve got hero, you’ve got anti-hero, you have villain… is there such a thing as an anti-villain?”

Geraldine Viswanathan as Mel

Australian actress Geraldine Viswanathan helped anchor the ensemble of raunchy comedy Blockers in 2018 before landing a role on the TBS series Miracle Workers (2019–2023). Other credits include Bad Education (2019), Bojack Horseman (2019–2020), and Ethan Coen’s Drive-Away Dolls (2024).

Like Pullman’s Bob, Viswanathan’s Mel is another new addition to the MCU. Speaking with EW at Comic-Con last year, she described her character as Valentina’s “little right-hand man.”

Where can I watch Thunderbolts*?

Thunderbolts* arrives in theaters and IMAX on May 2.

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