They’re not the Avengers, but the Thunderbolts* are Avengers-adjacent.

(We didn’t put the asterisk after Thunderbolts; Kevin Feige did for reasons known only to him right now.)

Marvel released an extended trailer and new artwork today for its upcoming 2025 release Thunderbolts*, a sort of darker version of the Avengers, who will be getting their own movie next year.

Marvel calls Thunderbolts* “an irreverent team-up featuring depressed assassin Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) alongside the MCU’s least-anticipated band of misfits.”

That band consists of Red Guardian/Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour), US Agent/John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Taskmaster/Antonia Dreykov (Olga Kurylenko) and Ghost/Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen), as well as Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) who goes from pursuing the group to leading them, apparently.

The trailer opens with Pugh’s character, now the Black Widow, meeting up with her father, (Harbour), asking him, “you feel fulfilled?” He responds, “Why do you ask this? What brings you here?”

Then we hear her say, “there is something wrong with me…An emptiness…I’m just drifting…And I don’t have a purpose.”

Julia Louis-Dreyfus also returns as the group’s founder, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, reprising her Falcon and the Winter Soldier role, and Rachel Weisz plays Melina Vostokoff.

New to the MCU is Lewis Pullman as Bob, aka Sentry, who meets the rest of the ‘Bolts when they turn up unannounced at his home/office. Pullman took over the role when Steven Yeun dropped out. Pullman is the son of actor Bill Pullman.

Sentry is best known to Marvel comics fans as possibly the most dangerous and powerful superheroes in the MCU.

Jake Schreier is directing Thunderbolts* from a script by Lee Sung Jin, who reworked a screenplay by Black Widow screenwriter Eric Pearson. Both Schreier and Lee worked together on the Emmy-winning series Beef, which starred Yeun.

Thunderbolts*, asterisk and all, is the last of Marvel’s Phase V movies. It hits theaters on May 25, 2025.