ScreenCrush: The Podcast! - Thunderbolts: The New Avengers - Plot Holes EXPLAINED

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

The ScreenCrush team breaks down all the plot holes and unanswered questions from the New Avengers! Where was Spider-Man? Why didn't Sam help? Why is Bucky in Congress!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We are the thunderbolts. I'm noting a little hole in your plot, though. Hey, welcome back Screen Crush. I'm Ryan Erie. And let's talk about all of your plot holes and unanswered questions in the new Avengers. Now, whenever you make a sprawling MCU film like this, it's going to bring together many threads for many franchises. There's always going to be some confusion or things that just don't make sense. So we asked you guys for your plot holes on my Twitter and our community page. So let's get to these questions.

As always, remember, you can listen to us on all your favorite podcasts. platforms and check out our merch store for fun parody merch that we designed for you. And I am so excited to show you guys these new Thunderbolt soccer team shirts, sponsored by Shane's Tire, and you can even customize the team member with different names on the back. Links are below. You guys had questions about Spider-Man in the void, the new Avengers, and how the Century got his powers, and we have answers. Now, the first big set piece of the movie is the incinerator sequence. In fact, the team is in and around this one compound for the entire first half of the film. Our first question comes from my name Jeff, who says,

says, Yelena is somehow fighting toe to toe with super soldier John Walker in the vault. He puts his weight on her trying to stab her face and somehow she was resisting. Great question. After all, John Walker is a super soldier that is able to kick Yelena across the room and later uses his super strength to jump so far up an elevator shaft that he's out of sight. And he pretty well dominates her throughout the fight. When she jumps at him, he swats her away with his shield and she does at one point come in him with her knife. Then they pause for a brief dialogue scene and he swats the knife away easily. But then later, she is on the ground and he goes to stab her in the face and she blocks it here. But notice she's got her widow stinkers on.

This is shocking Walker, slowing him down as we see him grimace in pain. So that is why she's able to stop him from stabbing her. Next, at Pinch David says, why was Walker struggling to fight Ghost and Yelaina specifically? Dude's a super soldier. Now, I already answered the part about Yelena, but Ghost also seems obvious. Walker is a super soldier and Ghost doesn't have super strength. But then she also doesn't even try to fight him. She goes after Taskmaster and literally phases through him. Mission Man 1914 asked, Why was Taskmaster killed so easily? In the MCU Black Widow, Taskmaster wears a helmet,

a high-tech one that enables her combat abilities and protects her head. It's part of advanced tactical armor designed by the Red Room. It could easily withstand small arms fire. Now, the short answer is that she was originally in the whole movie. But director Jake Schrear recently revealed that they realized they needed to kill someone early in the movie because these are all assassins and murderers and they wanted to raise the stakes. Now, we did cover this in detail in our deleted scenes video. But as for how the headshot killed her, you're right, she was wearing a helmet in Black Widow.

But we don't actually know that that helmet was bulletproof, and after all, she's wearing a different helmet in this movie. But let's even say the helmet is bulletproof to most small arms fire. I think Ghost, a professional assassin, would have come prepared and brought a weapon that was able to penetrate the helmet at close range. I love this question. John Estrada 294 asked, why did the furnace have a timer before it burning everything inside?

It's like giving them time to escape. I think the reason is the timer was not placed in there for the thunderbolts. It was placed by the people who installed the incinerator, is a fail-safe. That way, if any workers were in the room were still inside when the incinerator kicked in, they would have time to leave or dismantle it, and they would know exactly how much time they had to escape the room. Yes, they should have taken out the timer before they set the trap, but Ox was covering up everything really hastily, which explains why some hero kept the timer in place. A little bit of Japan asked, how did John Walker smuggle his shield from the furnace building to their escape vehicle without getting noticed?

The short answer is, it was strapped to his back, and he wore a big uniform that covered it up. For the long answer, watch a spinoff Disney Plus show where they explain it. Bocault asked how an empty truck was driven around and how ghosts recognized the team in disguise. Well, as for how she recognized them, you know, spy stuff. She probably watched them exit. I mean, after all, they were the only people to leave the building. And as for the empty truck, it may not have been empty the whole time she was driving it. Or it was empty and people just assumed it was a self-driving car.

It is the MCU after all. Ranger things have happened. And now let's move on to the desert chase and the Bucky interrogation scene. Mo Moora 305 asked, Red Guardian somehow finds Yelena and the gang after they had a head start and a better idea of where they were going. Now Red Guardian drove Vow the night before where he overheard the coordinates to the vault, like he tells Yelena. Oh yeah, I missed that because I was out having a wee-ree and getting some real good sniffs in. Totally understandable.

And a lot of people also asked how Red Guardian could drive from Washington, D.C. to Oklahoma in a vehicle that doesn't go above 55 miles an hour. And again, the short answer is we don't know how long they were inside the vault. In fact, when they get out, one of the first things Walker does is find some cactus berry for them to eat. so I imagine they were down there quite a while. Shadowfish 74 asked, how did Bucky haul all of them from the crash limo to the service station? Great question. So let's assume they were all unconscious for like an hour.

I think Bucky would have definitely had his holding spot worked out ahead of time and maybe even a transport vehicle stashed away. We do see an old truck parked outside. So he knocks them out, ties them up, goes and gets the truck and takes them back to the station. Or even better, he uses the tow truck at the gas station to haul the entire limo with the team to the gas station where he ties them up. Drugs, games, and rock and roll says Bucky kidnapping four people for an impeachment trial.

Well yeah, that's the whole point of his story in the movie. He's not good at Congress. When he reads the packets, he drips sauce all over them. So he's trying to use his superhero skills to make him a better congressman. And these are like super assassins. He's not sure if they would ever come willingly, which is why he's kidnapping them. Superb Gorilla asks, I'm sorry, but how did Chitari Cuffs prevent quantum phasing? I mean, they're stasis cuffs, right?

So I could see them canceling out any kind of energy manipulation abilities. Heck, when the X-Men entered the MCU, I wonder if the government will adapt Chitari Tech to create the power-dampening collars that we saw in Deadpool 2 and in X-Men 97. J. Alex 9-002 asked, if Ghost Phasing could be nullified by those handcuffs the entire time, then Shield's had that technology since 2012. They could have given it to her instead of letting her become a rogue agent. Yeah, you're not wrong, but isn't that even more messed up? The whole reason Bill Foster helped Ava was because he knew that Shield wasn't doing enough for her.

Shield knew that Ava was a useful assassin, and they never had to be. had any interest in curing her. You can say this was like the Hydra influence inside of Shield, but in Secret Invasion, we did see how Fury used the scrolls for decades when he knew that he couldn't find them a home for some reason. Yeah, I didn't see Secret Invasion. I was out doing a wee and getting many sniffs. Okay. And finally, FabNap says, Bucky restrained Walker and Red Guardian with just a bent steel rod. If he can bend it, so can they. Now, I think this is all due to leverage. They didn't have the leverage to unbend the rods. Plus, if they would have tried, Bucky just would have knock them out again. And their goal here wasn't to escape. It was to convince Bucky to help

them go after Bob. And speaking to Bucky, let's talk about his political career. E. Wizard 2112 says Bucky's a congressman after killing JFK. Well, first of all, I'm not even sure that's enough to not get you elected these days. But second, Bucky didn't kill JFK. Sebastian Stan joked about this in a promo video for Captain America Civil War back in 2016. Or when the Soviets had me shoot JFK. But Bucky did kill Howard Stark and a lot of other people. Now, I know that he has made amends for all of that and his pardon was contingent on him going to therapy, but generally, people wouldn't vote for a brainwashed assassin to be a congressional leader, just you know on the off chance that he was still a hydra agent, or in this case that he could have been re-brainwashed by Wakanda. So, think about what

this says about hero worship in the MCU. We saw Avenger Khan and Ms. Marvel and Rogers the musical in Hawkeye, but superheroes have always been huge celebrities in the MCU, not just Tony Stark, even Steve Rogers was a movie star before he was a superhero. So in the MCU, this means that people love the Avengers so much that they would elect any superhero at a high office, even former Hydra Assassins. Actually, since Bucky represents Brooklyn, they should address all of this in Daredevil season two, you know, because the Kingpin just outlawed all vigilantes, but they'll probably never acknowledge this in the show or movies. Now, earlier, I told you about our Thunderbolt Soccerty collection, and I know that we're also all so excited for the

Fantastic Four. So we designed this thing shirt at our merch store and the style of John Carpenter's The Thing. We also have other fun Marvel parody merch like the IHU-3000. Fiske will fix it shirt and yardside, the woo, I'm about to make a name for myself shirt, the remember it, and the RPG cap elevator where he has two choices, fight or hail hydra. We love designing these shirts for you guys and shopping our merch store really does help out our channel. You can become a member, get free stuff, and help us make videos like this one. Links are below. Mando AEV says they never explained why Bucky chose to be a congressman. I don't think they need to explain it. Bucky wanted to move on from his past as the winter soldier and he wanted to make

his country a better place. Maybe before he entered World War II, Bucky wanted to run for office. But now we see that his time as a super soldier has colored his experience too much, and he doesn't have the patience for the slow grind of politics. Music lover My 6FO points out that. Vow tells Bucky that he lasted less than half a term as a congressman. Here's the thing. I don't think this means that Bucky is out of office. I think she's threatening him.

She's telling him that she'll have him ejected or that he is about to die. Or it could be that there is a deleted scene where Bucky resigned and decided to go after Val in his own way. And speaking to Vow, we had a lot of questions about her, Oxcore, and the Watchtower. I am talking here says Val is being investigated and yet she manages to burn down a lab and move everything to the vault for incineration and the government doesn't notice. Well, she says at the hearing that on paper, she is divested from Ox Corps. So clearly she already has secret channels for doing business without government oversight. But then again, who's going to oversee her? She's head of the CIA. So who watches the watchman, am I right?

The same person asked, why does Yelaina still work for Val? Did she have amnesia after the events of Hawkeye? Does anyone here not have amnesia? Well, Val hired her to do a job in Hawkeye, right, to go kill Clint Barton. But she also told her that Clint was responsible for killing Natasha, and she did this to make it personal so Elena would take the job. Now, afterwards, maybe Elena thought that Val made a mistake. Or, more likely, she was cool with taking Val's money,

but promised to not allow her to manipulate her emotions anymore. Or maybe she came back to Val and said, I know you lied to me about Clint. I didn't pull off the job, but I consider us square. Sauer Koto says, Val barking orders left and right to Mel, and then literally in the next scene, the job is done. Get this building cleaned up now. Building this cleaned up in two minutes.

Get a cleanup crew to the top floor to get this body. And then the cleanup crew reports that there's nobody there even before they ride the elevator to the bottom floor. I mean, yeah, she's rich. She hires a lot of people to do stuff for her and she expects it to get done right away. And the cleanup crew was already stationed near Bob's body, so they got there really fast. Seems pretty simple to me. It takes a long time to ride an elevator from the top of a skyscraper at the bottom. At Ride Kaiser 4203 says, the Avengers Tower. There were deleted scenes from far from home that showed Spider-Man at the beginning of the movie texting while swinging past the tower under construction. Then there was a deleted scene from the end of the movie where Spider-Man

flies through the new building and lands on top of Grand Central Station, which puts that new building exactly where the tower should be. And now, Thunderbolts completely ignores the timeline of the building. Okay, so for one thing, you're talking about deleted scenes and they don't count, even though the Thor, Noran hot tub scene from Age of Ultron should totally count. But I don't think you're 100% right about that deleted scene. Now in the trailer, we do see Peter and his homecoming suit swinging in front of Avengers Tower as it's being renovated. But this isn't necessarily a canon deleted scene. Remember, they created this shot of Iron Man and Spider-Man that was specifically made for the Homecoming trailer. But you raise a good point, and far from home, the building does have this

open atrium. The movie ends with Peter texting and web-slinging, and then he swings through the atrium in the building. Then we see construction scaffolding on 42nd Street outside that reads, 1-2-3-4. We can't wait to show you what's next to tease Marvel's plans for phase 4. I mean, the fact is, they've actually avoided showing Avengers Tower in any skyline shots, even shots where it should have appeared in shows like Hawkeye. Also, in this movie, there is no atrium in the center of the building, but there is a simple explanation. Val did not buy the tower from Tony Stark.

Somebody else bought it, added the atrium, and then, after the blip, Val bought it, probably for a great price. And then she covered up the atrium with the golden panes of glass. After all, Far From Home took place in 2023, and this movie is technically taking place in 2027. which is plenty of time to complete this renovation. Seneca OxyMoron asked, how do they create the kill switch for Century so quickly? Mel clearly told Valentin that they destroyed the kill switch in their cleaning process.

Easy answer. They had already built it once. So they had the plans and it was easy to rebuild since there was no R&D involved. However, you'll notice the kill switch that they build isn't very sleek looking. In fact, it's actually taped together to show how hastily they had to construct it. Donster 2910 pointed out, Mel, Valentina's turn coat assistant, is supposed to be the comic character song bird. She's the one controlling vowel sound systems, and she has that songbird pendant. Okay, that's more of a missed Easter egg, but thank you. And here's another Easter egg we missed. When Bucky exits his shame room, you can actually see the room where Hydra tortured him right here.

Avian Espia says, what happened to Valentina's interest in vibranium? It just disappeared. That's not true at all. In fact, we have just found out why she had an interest in vibranium. We did a great video last week speculating how the Century Serum gave him his powers. And we concluded that the heart-shaped herb must have had something to do with it. Now, the herb is used to give people superpowers and also transport you to other dimensional planes. And we think about what Bob does at the end of the movie, sending people into their own worst nightmares. And the heart-shaped herb derives its power for the vibranium inside the mountain. So we think that vibranium, the super soldier serum, and the energy from the arc reactor that powers the watchtower,

all would have contributed to turning Bob into the century. But speaking of the void, we had lots of questions about the ending of this movie. Spartan of War 01 asked, not a plot hole, but is it ever explained what made Bob so different from the other test subjects who died? My guess is, and again, we talked about this in our Bob God's Powers video, my guess is that it had something to do with what made the Super Soldier serum work to begin with. Remember, in the very first Captain American movie, Erskine explains that the serum just amplifies what is inside of somebody. The serum amplifies everything that is inside, so good becomes great, bad becomes worse. So Bob's serum was likely a cocktail filled with aspects of vibranium,

Infinity Stone Energy, and the Super Soldier Serum. And the serum amplifies whatever is inside of a person. So for Bob, I think that his schizophrenia and troubled past are somehow what allowed him to survive the process. Like maybe instead of the process killing him, it just triggered the existence of the void who protected Bob from death. In other words, the very thing that makes him great is also what makes him a threat. Eggie's card says, how the hell did Bob learn the powers slash become sentry so fast? All right, we might have a case of movie time here. It seems fast in the movie, but it could have been several hours or a day or so in the movie.

It just depends on how long the Thunderbolts were walking in the desert and how long Bucky held them prisoner. But remember, we also saw that Bob was able to use the Void's powers very quickly, you know, in the flashback in the lab. So it would make sense if he was also able to use his other powers fairly quickly once he knew they existed. El Trujillo 1971 says, How did the other Thunderbolts get to Elena so fast in the void? Surely, they all had to go through their own individual dark memories first. Sure, but I'm wondering how much time actually passed in the real world while they were in their shame rooms. It could be that time passes differently there, kind of like in Narnia or in the dream levels in Inception.

I also think that this is a group of people who are intimately familiar with their shame and have experienced dealing with their traumas, so they would have accelerated through those shame rooms pretty fast. Nevin 6815 asks, How did the Thunderbolts find Bob in the void? Did millions of people get voided? How was it that all the Thunderbolts got to Bob and only they got to him? I feel like people in New York City, like Spider-Man or Daredevil, would have figured out that there were portals and would have found him too.

Well, we're actually making a video about the other New York-based superheroes and what they might have seen in the void. But the Thunderbolts would be able to find Bob fast because they had already met him and they knew who the hell he is. Nobody else would enter the void with the intention to find Bob. They were just enveloped by their individual shame. Shame. Shame.

Stees Flick says Bob wearing the same clothes he had on from inside the void. That's a plot hole. Again, we talked about this in our video about Bob's powers. In the comics and in the MCU, Bob shows that he has the ability to warp reality. In the comics, he uses this ability to make the world forget about him. And in the movie, he uses it to revert his clothes to normal when he forgets about being the Century. This is also why his hair reverted back to its normal color. I mean, granted, the Century is a ridiculously overpowered character both in the comics and in the movie.

Varukasius asks, where do the people blipped out of the helicopters reappear in the air or in the wreckage? It's not really a plot hole, but okay. When the hawk snapped everybody back in Avengers endgame, the Russo brothers specifically said that he would have made sure to wish that everybody was brought back safely. I don't think Bob would have had the mental acuity to do the same. So those people in the helicopter who were voided, they fell to their deaths and died frightened and alone. And we also had a lot of questions about the new Avengers. Ivan Ivanov Krakowski says,

how did Val manage to set up a press conference so quickly after the void was defeated? The area where she set it up would have been in direct contact with the void. Well, there's a moment right when like the shit hits the fan, when Val sees the Thunderbolts fighting and she gets the idea to repackage them as the New Avengers. From that moment until Yelena enters the void takes about three minutes. But after that, we have no idea how much time passes in the outside world until the void fully engulfs Manhattan. Because it keeps cutting back and forth from the Thunderbolts debating whether or not to go in

to Yelena inside the void. Now remember, the press were already on their way, so Val would have presumably had time to repurpose a curtain for a makeship press conference, especially if all she had to do was wheel out a podium that she was already planning on using. In fact, maybe the original press conference was meant to be in the lobby of the building, making it even easier for her to switch locations. Henri R.N. says Valentina would have definitely registered the copyright for the title, The Avengers, first. Maybe not, because remember, in the show Shehawk, the press called Jennifer Walter Shehawk, so the name entered the lexicon now. So when Titania tried to copyright the name, the court struck it down.

So there is a legal precedent for a superhero name simply being inherited through fair use. One could even argue that owning Avengers Tower entitles her to the name, the Avengers. Or you never know, maybe she wasn't able to copyright the Avengers because it was still owned by Tony Stark's estate. So instead, she registered a copyright for the name, The New Avengers. Zach Forbes had a great point. Bucky would not have agreed to work for Valentina overseeing this team of strangers in exchange for public fame when his whole motivation was to bring her down. She has nothing to hold him there

and he has no established motivation to play along. The thing is, I disagree. Like Yelaina tells Valentina, they own her. She has absolutely no power over these new Avengers. Bucky was trying to make sure that Valentina had a check on her power. And now, the Avengers are there to keep her from growing more powerful. He would join the team specifically to keep tabs on her and out of a sense of duty.

Like Steve was a founding Avengers, so he would stay on the team to honor his best friend. Kenny asked, how can the new Avengers operate in New York while it's under martial law with a ban on masked vigilantes. Well, for one thing, martial law doesn't last forever, and technically the mayor of New York can't even declare martial law. But yes, the TV shows and the movies are really going to have to work out their crossover stuff. In this case, in the show Daredevil Born Again,

Wilson Fisk, whose mayor, banned masked vigilantes from operating in his city. But the thing is, technically none of these heroes are wearing masks. They are all brought together by an agent of the federal government whose authority supersedes the mayors. In fact, though, I hope that Fisk uses this incident to petition for more control. Superhero is running around, raining destruction in everyone's heads. It's not good PR for the hero community. John says, the biggest plot hole is from the end credits. Bob didn't want to power up to prevent from becoming the void. However, he was able to control his powers before Val tried to kill

him. That's the biggest issue. That's not true. The void always emerges. The trauma from the kill switch triggered the void this time, but we already saw that the void also came out in the lab in Malaysia. Something else could easily trigger the century into becoming the void. Bulldog 170, In the end, I don't think Yelena would allow Vow to live after having Tasky killed. And Bucky would come forward with everything bad she did. They shouldn't need her to form their own team. Look, the movie did not do Taskmaster well at all. Yelena briefly eulogizes her, saying she killed people and then she got killed.

But then again, think about it. At the end of Black Widow, Taskmaster was free. She could have done anything. And instead, she went back to that violent life. She had her choice and she chose violence. And Yelena, deep down, thinks that they all deserve that same fate. I love this question. David Raymond asks, when Yelena shows up at Alexis, he says he's going to report the DoorDash driver to DoorDash HQ.

But shortly after, he offers to prepare food for Yelena. Did he even order DoorDash? Sure he did. But when Yelena shows up, he feels like he has to impress her and be a good papa. So he offers to make her some food, even though I'm sure all he has in that fridge is ketchup, packets, and vodka. Richard Johnson says, basically every superhero universe has the same problem. When some really big threat arises, where are the other heroes that we know exist and should be responding? Well, sure, but that's the fun of the MCU. isn't it? Like why didn't Steve Rogers help Tony when his house blew up? Well, because he was on a mission for Shield. And in this case, who would have shown up? The New York-based heroes wouldn't have had any time to swing into action,

and they would have no idea what was happening. The whole encounter probably only lasted a few minutes, and a lot of other superheroes like Sam are based in other cities. DC fandom asks, Bob is the century 24-7. He already unlocked his abilities, so what's stopping the void from taking over? Okay, well, this is more from the comics, but when Bob forces himself to forget about his powers, he then doesn't use them. So I'm guessing here they're doing something similar, except that Bob is allowed to know that using his powers will unlock his evil side.

Dash Bennett says, it really bothered me that there was no mention of Bucky having to get his arm back from Rocket. Also, who do we think is the leader of the new Avengers, Bucky or Yelena? You guys remember, Nebula gave Rocket Bucky's arm in the Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas special. Presumably, the Waccondans made him a new arm,

or they just always gave him a spare. As for who is the leader, it seems like Yelena is the leader, and Bucky is her second. Rob Davy has a great point. Why didn't Bucky call Sam when he learned about the Century? Well, maybe he tried and Sam was on a mission. Maybe Sam was visiting the leader and no cell phones are allowed in the raft because it isn't ultra-secure prison. Or maybe Bucky thought that it wouldn't be a great idea if Captain America got involved trying to take down the director of the CIA. Like clearly, he is surprised at how powerful the century is, or else he probably would have called for a lot of backup. Well, guys, that's all the plot holes that we found. But if you have any other hand-answer questions, let me know 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. Smash that bell for alerts. For Screen Crush, I'm Ryan Erie.