Sam Wilson Deserves Better: I Can't Believe How The Thunderbolts* Movie's New Avengers Reveal Treats Captain America's Real Avengers

Warning! This post contains SPOILERS for Marvel’s Thunderbolts*On the one hand, I’m excited about the MCU’s “New Avengers” reveal in Thunderbolts* and what it means for the future. However, I still think that Sam Wilson deserved better. After all, it’s easy to argue that the new Captain America definitely just had his “thunder” stolen.

In Thunderbolts*, Yelena Belova, Bucky Barnes, John Walker, Red Guardian, Ghost, and Bob Reynolds aka Sentry all come together as a brand-new team of heroes. However, the surprise twist at the end of Thunderbolts* revealed that this new team will be going by another name entirely: The New Avengers. Keeping that in mind, it does feel as though Thunderbolts’ “disrespect” towards Sam Wilson’s Captain America and his own Avengers goals will become a key plot point in the MCU’s future.

Man, I Was Not Expecting Thunderbolts* To Disrespect Sam Wilson’s Avengers

It’s Teased That Captain America Already Has An Opposing Team of Heroes

Sam Wilson in Captain America Brave New World and the Avengers in Endgame poster — Custom Image by Kai Young

As seen at the end of Thunderbolts*, Val holds a press conference to declare that the Thunderbolts are actually her New Avengers. This allowed Val to publicly save face following the Void’s attack on New York, as well as saving her own skin from the Thunderbolts themselves. However, the new arrangement conversely works in the Thunderbolts/New Avengers’ favor too, and Yelena says as much when she leans in to tell Val that they “own” her now.

Sure enough, the final post-credits scene for Thunderbolts* features the New Avengers operating out of the Watchtower/Avengers tower 14 months later. Shown with an all-new Avengers “A” logo, new uniforms, a state-of-the-art AI system, and even jets at their disposal, all these new bells and whistles are presumably all at the expense of Val and O.X.E Group. However, the post-credits scene also confirms that Sam Wilson’s Captain America is none too happy about the “New Avengers”.

The end of Captain America: Brave New World saw Sam announcing that he was planning to reᴀssemble the Avengers. As such, it’s pretty surprising that the very next MCU movie released only a few months after Brave New World has debuted a whole new Avengers team, without even fully confirming the members of Captain America’s team. Now, that reveal will more than likely be saved for Avengers: Doomsday in 2026.

New Avengers: Thunderbolts’ Post-Credits Scene Sets Up Some MCU Antipathy

Sam and Yelena’s Teams Might Not Get Along Very Well

MCU Sam Wilson in Falcon and the Winter Soldier Florence Pugh as Yelena in Thunderbolts and Phase 4 schedule in the background — Custom image by Simone Ashmoore.

As revealed in the final Thunderbolts* post-credits scene, Bucky confirms that he’d recently talked to Sam, and that Captain America is not happy about their rival team of Avengers. Likewise, Yelena confirms that Wilson even went so far as to have the “Avengers” name copyrighted. As a fun bit of marketing, real-life social media pages for The Avengers have recently received copyright marks ahead of their names.

Keeping all of this in mind, it stands to reason that the tensions between Captain America’s Avengers and the New Avengers will likely be an ongoing rivalry in the MCU. Likewise, they might not get along very well in upcoming crossovers like Avengers: Doomsday or Avengers: Secret Wars. That said, having more than one Avengers team will probably end up being a major benefit once Doctor Doom emerges as the next major threat to the MCU and the multiverse at large.

Multiple Teams of Avengers Can Only Be Good For Doomsday

Splitting Up MCU Teams Among Various Goals

Even if Sam Wilson isn’t a fan of the apparent name theft, more MCU teams working together can only be good for Avengers: Doomsday and beyond. More teams mean more opportunities to divide and conquer, splitting up in response to various goals similar to what’s seen in Infinity War and Endgame. Not only is it a good narrative device that allows audiences to focus on a handful of heroes at a time until the final act, but it undoubtedly helps with production schedules too.

In total, it’s been confirmed by Kevin Feige that Doomsday and Secret Wars will see the Avengers, Thunderbolts/New Avengers, X-Men, and Fantastic Four all coming together to stop Doctor Doom. One can imagine that Kamala Khan and Kate Bishop’s Young Avengers/Champions might be featured as well. At any rate, some pre-existing animosity between teams like the Avengers and New Avengers will help justify some of the aforementioned splitting up that will likely occur in Doomsday.

Thunderbolts* is now playing in theaters from Marvel Studios.