ScreenCrush: The Podcast! - Thunderbolts* Deleted Scenes that Would've Changed the MCU

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

Thunderbolts* (New Avengers) left tons of deleted scenes on the cutting room floor. We break down the entire Taskmaster subplot with Ghost, the Zemo and Kang cameos, John Walker's heel turn as a monster, and all of the deleted shame rooms that would have redefined the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That's right, we almost got cameos from Steve Rogers and Black Widow in the movie. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Being a hero, serving people in the streets, there is no higher calling. Hey, welcome back Screen Crush. I'm Ryan Erie. In The Thunderbolts, sorry, the New Avengers had some massive deleted scenes that would have completely changed the movie. Now, a lot of you pointed out how Little Taskmaster was in the movie and how Ava had almost nothing to do. Well, guess what? They originally had much larger roles. And the original Big Bad of the movie was going to be U.S. agent himself, John Walker. So let's dive into all of those deleted scenes and talk about how far they actually got before they were cut. As always, remember, we're on all podcast platforms, and for a limited time, get your Thunderbolts jersey at our merch store, sponsored by Shane's Tire. Choose which team member you want to rep. Personally, I ordered and Bob.

Links are below. So first, let's talk about the very different final act of the movie. In the film's final act, the void forces New Yorkers into darkness and depression faster than the Adams administration. And everyone who has pulled into the void is forced to revisit. some of the worst memories of their life, aka shame rooms. For Yelena, we see her loring her friend Anya into being killed. Then she assembles her weapons so fast that the other girls are whipped, and finally we see when she tries to drink herself to death in a bathroom.

As for Bob, we see him trying to intervene when his dad abuses his mom and his time is a sign twirling chicken, and finally, ending at the moment when the void first emerged and killed people. But we never got to see anybody else's shame rooms. So as we'll talk about later, early versions of the movie emphasized more of the cast, people like Taskmaster and Ghost, but in the final film, it's mostly Elena's movie. In fact, screenwriter Eric Pearson told the rap that they also talked about including Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow in one of these flashbacks.

One of many possible cameos from the original Avengers that I'm going to talk about in just a bit. But director Jake Schreier told Variety that the original final act showed a montage of the team shame rooms. Now, they ended up scrapping this idea so they could focus on Bob's rooms, building up to the confrontation in the lab. But according to Schreer, they got really far in this process. They had full, animatic, and storyboarded sequences for Bucky, Ava, and Alexi. And he was especially disappointed that they didn't get to show Alexi's shame room. But what was in his shame room?

Well, they were going to show the moment he was arrested and placed in the gulag, where we saw him rescued in Black Widow. Like he says in this movie, his proudest moment is when he was a hero in saving lives. In Black Widow, he loves looking at an action figure of himself, and in this movie, he's watching a video of himself with Brezhnev, watching a Soviet parade. And, in the Black Widow flashbacks, we saw that he was close to Drake, So the big mystery of his character is how did the Soviet super soldier end up in prison for decades? So I think this shame room would have given us some key insight into who Alexi is.

Like, did he disobey Drakeov's orders? What could he have done so wrong that it would cause the Soviet Union to bench their most powerful super soldier? I think this is a backstory that needs to be filled in at some point, so the character becomes more than just comic relief. Well, yeah, but what about Ava's shame room? Well, remember, we did see Ava's origin in Ant Man of the Wasp. Her dad tried to build his own quantum tunnel, and when she'll shut it down, it backfired, orphaning Ava and turning her intangible. So her shame room would have been about her time in the orphanage right after her parents died.

It would illustrate the feeling of being invisible and how the other kids wanted nothing to do with her. And this would have been a great extension of the character that we met in Ant Man 2. In that movie, Ava's body is gradually disintegrating, even with the help of Bill Foster. She can't touch others, she can't be close to anyone, and she feels like a ghost, someone who doesn't belong and nobody wants to see. Now, there's other reasons we didn't see much of Ava that I'm going to talk about later in the video. But what about Bucky? What was in his shame room?

Well, they had a few ideas for Bucky, but see, that one's risky because we already know so much about his past. He was a brainwashed Hydra assassin for decades, and we already saw one of his most traumatic memories in Falcon and the Winter Soldier when he killed an unarmed civilian. So it was tough for them to figure out a shame room that wouldn't feel redundant. In fact, they even joke about that in the movie when Bucky says, oh, I have a great pass, so I'm fine. And the filmmakers hit on what I think is a genius workaround. Instead of focusing on his time as the winter soldier, they had a scene where he had

a shameful experience at Boy Scout camp. And this would have shown us that Bucky isn't just defined by his time as the Winter Soldier. But there was also a chance for a cool cameo here. Like, imagine if Bucky was ostracized by everyone else at camp, but then one skinny, asthmatic kid introduces himself. That's right, we could have gotten a Steve Rogers cameo in this movie. And we would see how Steve was always able to pull Bucky out of his despair, just like how the Thunderbolts all helped Bob. Shrier also implied that Walker's earlier flashback scene was meant to be his shame room at the end of the film. He told Variety he loved what Joanna Calo, co-screenwriter of the Thunderbolts wrote for Walker. Quote, it does speak to that terrible moment from Falcon

of the Winter Soldier, not in going back to that moment, but more in going to what those kinds of moments do to us. Now that's a good point. Maybe they didn't want to revisit when Walker killed a man in broad daylight. But still, this says something about Walker. He's not so much ashamed or remorseful about what he did, but he is ashamed of how his reaction to it cost him his family. Well, that all sounds so cool. Why did they cut all that? Well, like I said, they wanted to keep the focus on Bob, and this does keep the narrative a lot tighter and more streamlined. All of these scenes remind me of the Wanda illusions that we saw in Age of Ultron, you know, where each Avenger saw their worst nightmares come to life. Some people think those scenes were

pointless, but I thought they added layers of depth to the characters that paid off later, either in the same movie or in future installments. For instance, Steve saw a vision of everybody he knew in the war disappearing, which is why he decides to stay in Avenger later on in the movie. Family, stability, guy who wanted all that went in the ice 75 years ago. And these visions also set up Tony's Ark and Civil War and Infinity War and the destruction of Asgard and Thor Ragnarok and also the entire plot for the movie Black Widow. I mean, for me, the only real flaw in the movie The Thunderbolts is that we didn't get enough time with the team.

you haven't seen Ant Man in the Wasp recently, you wouldn't really know who this woman is or why she's in the movie. But like I said, Ava and the Taskmaster originally had a longer arc I'll talk about a little bit later. Now, there are some deleted scenes that were fully shot or maybe just storyboarded, but at one point, we almost had a completely different movie. They were going to do a comic, accurate century. What's that mean? Well, in the comics, the century is introduced as an ordinary guy, an alcoholic named Bob, who dreams at night that he's a superhero. And gradually, he finds out that he was actually the greatest superhero on earth. But Reed Richards, Dr. Strange, and his other friends conspired to

erase his memory from the world. Guys, this is an amazing comic book that would have been a great way to introduce Century to the MCU. They could have featured cameos galore as Bob finds other heroes to learn about his past. He could have met up with the Hulk or Spider-Man or even an old Steve Rogers. But they scrapped this idea when Jake Shear's former college roommate, John Watts, used a similar storyline in Spider-Man No Way Home. That movie ends, you know, of course, with a different superhero being erased from the world's memories. So to then repeat that idea in the first new Avengers movie would have felt redundant. Now, leading up to the Thunderbolts, we all had tons of theories about the movie. Like when they first announced the film, I assumed that it would

be based on the original Thunderbolts run by Kurt Busiak and Mark Bagley. In that book, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four have disappeared in a new hero group called the Thunderbolts appears to pick up the slack. But then, in an amazing twist, it has revealed that they were actually a team of supervillains led by Baron Zemo. And it turns out that this movie almost followed that same Baron Zemo plot line. And it makes sense because the situations are so similar. In the MCU, the Avengers are gone, so it would make sense if Zemo would assemble a team of villains to take their place. Zemo is one of the greatest villains in the MCU, and the show Falcon the Winter Soldier added layers to his character.

The desire to become a superhuman cannot be separated from supremacist ideals. And he also has great taste in music. I told him about Trouble Man, he wrote it in their pockets. It is a masterpiece, James, complete. It captures the African-American experience. He's out of line, but he's right. Now, Falcon the Winter Soldier revealed that Zemo's ideal world contains no superhumans, so it would be interesting to see him lead a team of enhanced people and then turn on them in the end.

Now, obviously, Marvel went a different way, and Valentina was the one who played that manipulator role. But Zemo was actually in an original draft. Co-writer Eric Pearson told IGN that before the Hollywood strikes in 2023, he wrote a few alternate post-credit scenes. And one of them featured Zemo in prison, and it would have revealed that he was actually pulling the strings like Kaiser Sose, the secret mastermind villain and the usual suspects. Pearson added, but I don't think that iteration lived longer than like, hey, what about this? Nope, not that. So how is Zemo going to manipulate everybody?

Well, it's hard to say what the plot of the movie even was at this point. Valentina and the Century Project may not have been as large a part of the movie. Maybe Zemo was trying to get these people in the same room so they would kill each other. Or maybe he wanted them to neutralize the Century because he hates. superhumans. But Pearson also confirmed that earlier drafts of the post-credit scene also featured Kang the Conqueror, which makes total sense. Remember, back in 2023, Quantummania had just set up Kang to be the Multiverse Saga's Big Bad, or at least that movie set up his variance to be the big bad when Kang was defeated by ants. How many did you call all of us?

Everyone! So Marvel would have been planning on including Kang in as many post-credit scenes as they could. So, it may be instead of the Fantastic Four arriving, we would have seen Kang observing the new Avengers, like the Wicked Witch of the West, watching Dorothy and her crystal ball. Or the new Avengers would have been alerted to some kind of multiversal incursion caused by Kang. Now, of course, we didn't get that post-credit scene because Jonathan Majors was arrested, quantum mania disappointed fans, and then Majors was phased out of the MCU like so much poochie. Still, I thought that we might see a Dr. Doom tease in the movie, but you have to admit, getting an MCU teaser for a movie that is actually coming out soon as a huge relief after getting teas, after teas, after tease, after tease, after tease that so far have gone nowhere. And in that same interview, Pearson also confirmed that there were never any plans to include

Thunderbolt Ross in the movie, even though he found that a different Thunderbolts team in the comics. So this dash is another fan theory that I've had for years, that Ross would have formed his own team of Dark Avengers to fill the gap left by Tony and Steve's old team. Now obviously, Captain America Brave New World took us in a different direction. They made Ross become a man who suddenly wants to turn his life around. He does want to start his own Avengers team, but it's because he suddenly believes in superheroes after fighting to keep them suppressed for years. You're just mad, your fan theory wasn't right. A little, yeah, because for over a decade, this was the arc they were setting Ross up for, and it's weird that they suddenly jerked him

another way and had all of his character development happen off screen. But now, let's talk about those deleted ghost and taskmaster scenes and how John Walker was the original Big Bad of the movie. In an interview with Polygon, co-writer Eric Pearson confirmed that they wrote and filmed a much longer arc for Taskmaster in the movie. He only found out that Marvel significantly reduced her role at the first test screening. Originally, Taskmaster, aka Antonio Drakov, lived through the entire movie and in the final draft of a screenplay, and she spent much of the movie bonding with Ava. Pearson described how the two of them have a lot in common because, quote,

they were people who grew up in labs and were controlled in that way. I mean, it's likely that neither of these people ever met somebody with the past so similar to theirs, so they would feel relief in meeting a kindred spirit. Pearson described Ava as a big sister to Taskmaster since she, quote, won her autonomy early in the chronology. And guys, this explains why Ghost had almost nothing to do in the movie except go back for the team twice and then get pinned down by sound, like George McFly. All of the scenes of Ghost telling her story and connecting with someone else were cut.

Pearson also talked about how Taskmaster helped to rein in the other characters because her past was the most screwed up. He said, quote, I mean, everyone in this. there has suffered a ton of tragedy, but she was kind of the ultimate tragedy. No one could get out of line because no one could say, I had it worse than you. And it sounds like her character was actually a lot of fun. There was a running joke throughout the movie where she was dealing with memory loss, similar to Bob's. There was a gag where she kept trying to restart the fight that we see in the trailer. Specifically, she keeps trying to kill John Walker. The group had to pin her down

and keep explaining that, hey, we're all friends now. I feel bad for Pearson here, but I feel especially bad for Olga Currilink, who played Taskmaster and declined to do press for the movie. Antonia was so important to the story of Natasha. Natasha thought the killing Drakeov's daughter had damned her. So, saving her life and freeing her from mind control gave Natasha redemption. But then they traded all that in for a quick headshot gag and a new dialogue scene where Yelena dismisses her saying she killed people and then she got killed. Guys remember, Eric Pearson wrote the movie Black Widow. He had a big role in creating this version of the character of Taskmaster. So he had a personal stake in Antonia's story. Now, I know a lot of fans didn't like how they changed Taskmaster

for the movies. In the comics, he's a wisecracking assassin, more like Deadpool. And in the movie, they made Taskmaster a silent assassin like Fox did to Deadpool. But I don't think fan backlash is the reason they killed her off. The movie probably just felt overstuffed and they had to cut a character. And also, killing her off did send a message that no one was safe for the rest of the movie. Although it is interesting to note that originally Marvel did toy with Taskmaster being more true to his comic self. O.T. Fagbenle recently told the direct that he auditioned for Taskmaster and that the part had quippy dialogue, but you know, then they went another way. So you never know. Maybe his character Rick Mason could get the same chip implanted in his head that Antonio had and he could

be the taskmaster after all. But Pearson dropped an even bigger bombshell to comicbook.com. Originally, John Walker was going to be the big bad final fight villain of the movie. The original plan involved Valentina manipulating all of the thunderbolts in different ways, specifically Walker was led to believe that his super soldier serum was failing him, so he'd have to take monthly shots to feel stronger. Now, some of you may recognize this as similar to the character of nuke from the comics and from the show Jessica Jones. But in the movie, these treatments would have ended up mutating Walker into a Hulk-like monster that she called her A-bomb. And A-bomb is, of course, a Hulk that Rick Jones turns into in the comics. Now, Pearson discarded this idea when he realized that Bob was actually the emotional core to the story.

And this final sequence would have also featured the return of Lawrence Fishburn, actually using his Goliath powers that we saw in What If? Instead, we got a much more subdued emotional ending, which I prefer. But this whole thing sounds an awful lot like they were taking the suicide squad, but then adding in the ending of Brave New World. I don't think that Marvel would have wanted to have two movies in a row that ended with characters hulking out and fighting the heroes. But maybe this idea for Walker was developed before Brave New World's ending.

After all, these movies have swapped release dates and been in various stages, of development for years, so it is possible that Pearson abandoned this idea and that Brave New World picked it up. Or maybe that they told him to lay off because they already had a Red Hulk. But I'm really glad they didn't keep this ending of the movie. Like in this movie and in the comics, Walker is an arrogant D-bag and a lot of fun is an annoyance to everybody around him. Turning him into a giant monster would have ignored everything that makes him a great character just to have a CGI action set piece. But get this. Originally, Val did introduce the team as the Thunderbolts. And Kevin Feige's big note was that instead, she should say the new Avengers.

Pearson told the rap, I thought, if that's the only note, I'm getting, take the money and run. But which of these deleted scenes do you guys think should have stayed in the movie? Should Taskmaster have had a bigger arc? Were they right to mostly focus on Yelena Belova? Let me hear your thoughts down in the comments below or at me on Twitter, Blue Sky Threads, or on our free-to-join Discord server. And if it's your first time here, please subscribe and smash that bell for alerts. For Screen Crush, I'm Ryan Erie. I'm going to be.