It’s always a question going into these big franchise movies who, if anyone, will meet their fate before the credits role. With the obvious exception of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, most of the outings in the MCU have killed off villains and/or mentor figures—and various grunts, naturally—but almost never a main or even supporting hero character. For Thunderbolts*, however—seemingly Marvel’s answer to The Suicide Squad—it seemed at least one of the heroes wouldn’t make it. Now, having seen (and enjoyed) the movie, I can tell you if anyone dies, and who that person might be.
Well, if you’ve spent any time watching the teasers for Thunderbolts* you probably noticed a lot of people with masks off and one person with mask on. That masked individual is Taskmaster, aka Antonia Dreykov (Olga Kurylenko). If you recall from 2021’s Black Widow, Antonia was the brainwashed and disfigured daughter of Red Room leader, General Dreykov. At the end of that movie, Natasha undoes the brainwashing, but evidently Antonia stayed in the mercenary game.
During Thunderbolts*‘ first big sequence, Yelena (Florence Pugh) goes to remote facility under orders from Val (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) to eliminate Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen). Very quickly, we and Yelena learn that Val actually sent a number of assassins to take each other out surreptitiously. Yelena to kill Ava, Ava to kill Antonia, Antonia to kill John Walker (Wyatt Russell), and Walker to Kill Yelena. Ava is the only one who succeeds, firing a bullet that strikes Antonia in the head, through her mask.
So, like, look, we all pretty much knew Taskmaster would be this movie’s cannon fodder. Kurylenko was the lone cast member whose name did not appear on the back of a director’s chair in the Doomsday announcement. What we didn’t necessarily know is how long she’d actually appear in the movie. The answer is roughly three minutes. Kurylenko’s face only appears unmasked for a matter of seconds. It’s so laughably small and with no real fanfare that it felt like the entire movie was an excuse to kill off Taskmaster and that’s it.
Does anyone else die in the movie? No, not really. Sure, the Thunderbolts take out some of Val’s goons, and it appears the Void wipes out a large amount of New York City. But the finale undoes all of the Void deaths. It’s also worth pointing out that—as has happened before—the trailers lied. As we see in the image above, Taskmaster stands with the other Thunderbolts. This scene comes at the end of the movie, long after Taskmaster has died. She does not appear in that shot at all. It’s the Hulk in Infinity War all over again.
I understand wanting stakes and showing that characters, especially these ones, are somewhat expendable. But the movie all but negates that instantly. So it’s just a character who, like Yelena, was exploited from a very young age and wasn’t even in control most of the time. And since she’s hardly on screen anyway, all the death really does is confirm that she didn’t matter in the first place. Slipknot lasted longer in the first Suicide Squad. They needn’t have bothered.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.
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