If you don’t recognize Lewis Pullman’s character in ‘Thunderbolts*,’ that’s probably the point
Wait, you don't remember Bob?
Thunderbolts*, the upcoming Marvel Studios film, teams antiheroes and straight-up villains from previous MCU properties that we remember. So who the heck is Lewis Pullman’s Thunderbolts* character Bob?
Dressed in oversized hospital scrubs, Bob appears only briefly in the teaser trailer for the film, which dropped on September 23. When he introduces himself, Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova asks who sent him. “Nobody,” he responds. “You were all sent?” That sets him apart from the rest of the team.
There’s also his newness in this ragtag bunch. We already know Yelena, Red Guardian, and Taskmaster’s deal from Black Widow. Ava “Ghost” Starr from Ant-Man and the Wasp and John “U.S. Agent” Walker from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier are also along for the ride. And then there’s Bucky Barnes, formerly known as the Winter Soldier. But just because Bob is new to the MCU doesn’t mean he’s a totally unfamiliar character—though him being the one character we don’t remember might be a bit.
He’s also (probably!) known as Sentry!
“Bob” is most likely (almost assuredly) short for Robert Reynolds, a.k.a. Sentry, a Marvel Comics character created by Paul Jenkins, Jae Lee, and Rick Veitch. He was introduced in a Marvel Knights miniseries in 2000, then in a handful of one shots, and his own series after that. He has teamed up with street level heroes like Daredevil and the Punisher, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and a handful of others. His nemesis is The Void. But there’s a catch.
In his solo series, Bob discovers that the Avengers he’s worked with have forgotten who he is. He even temporarily forgets that he is a superhero. This is, as I’m sure you’re aware, what happened to Peter Parker at the end of Spider-Man No Way Home. So it’ll be interesting to see if the MCU repeats this storyline with Bob.
Sentry’s powers come from super soldier serum.
That makes him like a lot of characters in the MCU. Another scene in the trailer seems to show Bob passively surviving a firing squad experiment, or execution. So we know that he’s bullet proof for starters. Without spoiling too much about Sentry’s powers and origin in the comics, I would advise you to keep an eye on Bob when you’re watching Thunderbolts*. Keep in mind that most of these characters are misunderstood and were antagonists at one point or another. We may well end up loving him anyway, but he’s probably not as sweet and innocent as he seems.
Thunderbolts* originally cast Steven Yeun as Sentry.
The Walking Dead, Invincible and Minari actor had to drop out for scheduling reasons around the time of the SAG strike. It happens! It’s truly NBD. Pullman will be great. I’m only mentioning it because I remember buzz when Yeun joined the MCU as Sentry specifically, not Bob. So I anticipate that some people might have missed that they’re probably the same character and that Pullman is seemingly replacing Yeun. Also, a lot of us were really looking forward to seeing Yeun play a superhero on screen, OK?? Even a messy, dark-ish one. Maybe next time.
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