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Marvel’s Thunderbolts Trailer Shows a Darker, More Intense Future

Yesterday, during the Super Bowl, Marvel gave us another solid look at Thunderbolts, the final movie to bow out the current phase of the MCU. The trailer largely covered re-introducing us to the team’s rag-tag group, just like our first big look did. However, it threw in some very interesting looks at what those would-be heroes are up against, and it’s not great.

While Marvel is still largely tip-toeing around the fact, it was already pretty much a given that Lewis Pullman’s "Bob" in Thunderbolts was in fact Robert Reynolds, aka Marvel’s most famous answer to Superman in the comics, Sentry. We barely saw Bob in the first trailer, and we see him even less in the new trailer. Well, sort of. Because while we don’t see much of Bob himself as the man who will become Sentry in the trailer, we do see a lot of a Superman-esque figure causing a whole lot of chaos and carnage.

And they are in fact one and the same.

Enter the Void

The Void is a malevolent persona that emerged in Robert’s mind after he gained superhuman powers as a teenager. Granting him vast powers of enhanced strength and speed, flight, invulnerability, and more, Robert’s ailing mental health also reacted to his transformation, immediately subsuming him in the Void. Capable of wielding all of Robert’s newfound powers but with a depraved malice that lifted his restraints, the Void was countered in Robert’s mind by the creation of a heroic persona, one that he would eventually manifest as Sentry.

For every life that Robert saved as Sentry, the Void aspired to take one in turn, and it would take years of investigation before Robert realized that Sentry and Void were two sides of the same coin. At the conclusion of his debut Marvel Knights miniseries, after the Void had slaughtered a million people in Manhattan, Robert worked with Mr. Fantastic and Doctor Strange on a plan to end the Void’s grip on him: by erasing not just Robert’s memory of his powers and time as Sentry, but the entire world’s, the Void would no longer have need to manifest as a dark foil to Sentry’s actions, seemingly eliminating the two altogether.

The Void’s Powers, Explained

As the same person, the Void essentially has all of Robert’s powers as Sentry as well as the compulsion to use them for evil. But as we see in the new Thunderbolts trailer, he does actually have several unique abilities that spin out of them. The Void uses Robert’s ability to manipulate matter and energy to not only shapeshift his form, but also project clouds and tendrils of dark matter, like the one we see enveloping New York in the film. Void’s "tendrils" themselves can also fluctuate in power, either being able to simply ensnare and subdue opponents, or in their most focused form, cause atomic cancellation in a person’s body—disintegrating them entirely as the field sustaining their atomic and subatomic particles is dissipated.

Although mostly bonded to Sentry, Void can possess other hosts beyond Robert, too, just as he did when he became part of Knull after Robert’s own death. Which means when the Thunderbolts go up against him this May, not even killing poor Bob outright might be able to stop one of the Marvel Comics universe’s deadliest threats.

What to Expect from the Thunderbolts Trailer

The trailer shows a more intense and darker future for the Thunderbolts, with the Void playing a larger role. We see more of the Void’s powers and abilities, including his ability to shapeshift and project dark matter. The trailer also suggests that the Thunderbolts may not be able to stop the Void, at least not without Robert’s involvement.

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