Overcoming the Void Within

These days there’s not much one expects when it comes to a new Marvel film. Long gone are the Avengers: Endgame stories of Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, full-fledged characters the writers got people to really root for. And it’s not that other beloved comic book characters don’t exist, rather that the new releases just aren’t doing them justice anymore (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 I must exclude from this). Flashy CGI, occasional witty one-liners, and inside jokes can only do so much of the work — we need complex characters and stories that we care about, that actually make us feel something. Mercifully, Thunderbolts* is something altogether different.

Don’t get me wrong, Thunderbolts* is chock full of witty one-liners and callbacks as well, but it doesn’t need to rely as heavily on them as their predecessors. Instead, the film asks the same questions and poses the same fears that plague much of society today: Where do we find meaning? What do we do with the feeling of emptiness? What does it mean to be human? And it does so in an authentic, vulnerable, and tasteful way rather than a shove-it-down-your-throat kind of way. It’s descriptive rather than prescriptive — it shows rather than tells.

Spoilers ahead (obviously).

“There’s something … wrong with me. An emptiness,” expresses Yelena in the first few seconds of the film. She’s found herself confined to the monotonous rhythm of work, undercover ops to retrieve classified files, destroy said classified files, rinse, repeat, wax on, wax off.

Her workaholism is not without warrant. The loss of her sister and distance from her father have left her alone and adrift. Yelena longs for purpose, she seeks meaning. The work isn’t distracting enough anymore. Hurt and shame are seeping into the cracks of her ever-crumbling exterior.

Unable to be left to her own devices any longer, she visits her father who she hasn’t talked to in a year. Alexei is thriving with his new limo business, or so he says, while surrounded by the massive mess of dirty clothes and expired takeout boxes that compose his home. In reality, he soon reveals, Alexei is also craving purpose. He yearns for the good ol’ days when he was a hero admired by thousands. His advice for finding purpose aligns perfectly with his own desires: “Yelena, being the hero, there is no higher calling.”

Yelena decides to take her father’s advice, telling her employer that she wants to take on more “face-fronting” jobs. Her boss agrees, but only after she completes one more covert mission. It’s here, in the bunker full of O.X.E. Group company secrets, that the audience meets the rest of the ragtag group of delinquents turned antiheroes turned eventual hero-heroes. And it turns out they have more in common than they think.

Firstly, they all have the same boss. Second, they are the company secrets that are meant to stay hidden aka destroyed aka blown up. But there’s one secret in the vault that no one expected, heck, he himself doesn’t even know how he got there. His name is Bob, he’s dressed in light blue scrubs, he’s aloof and awkward, and he’s played by my favorite nepo baby Lewis Pullman (I love you, Bill Pullman).

Bob, at first, appears to be your average, normal human. He clearly doesn’t have any combat skills nor the stomach for killing. And there’s something a bit forlorn about him. Yelena is the first one to notice this sadness, and perhaps it’s because she cares, but it’s also because looking at him is like looking in a mirror. Trapped in the underground bunker with seemingly no easy escape route, Bob quietly posits to Yelena that their plan would be better off without him. To which she replies:

“Okay, I, understand. We all feel like shit sometimes. And loneliness? I get that. I get it. And that, that darkness gets pretty enticing and then it starts to feel a little bit like, uh…”

Bob: “A void.”

Yelena: “Yep, a void.”

Bob: “What do you do about it?”

Yelena: “You shove it way down. You just push it … down.”

There are glimpses of vulnerability there, at the very least a self-awareness, but it doesn’t go much farther than an acknowledgment. It’s a bitter tune too often hummed: We don’t have time to deal with our feelings. It’s best we avoid our pain, numb it somehow.

Which brings us to the third thing this group of vandals all have in common. They all feel a similar void that they’ve attempted to shove deep, deep, deep down.

For Yelena, child assassin and grieving sister, it’s her lack of purpose. For John Walker, washed-up-Walmart Captain America, it’s his estrangement from his wife and child. For Alexei, former glorious but now obscure Red Guardian, it’s his hunger for admiration. For Bob, depressed meth-addict-turned-invincible-supervillain (we’ll get to that next), it’s his feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness.

It turns out that Bob is not, in fact, an average guy. Years prior to the events of Thunderbolts*, Bob traveled aimlessly and high through Malaysia and discovered a medical trial which advertised itself as a way to “make you stronger.” Long having dealt with abuse and depression, this trial felt like a new life for Bob. Maybe now he could finally make something of himself!

Unfortunately, it was a cover for O.X.E Group’s venture, called Sentry Project, to create an invincible superhuman to replace the deceased Avengers. The experimental scheme killed dozens of people and was thought to be a complete failure. That is, until Bob was discovered in the vault.

They escape the vault, and in doing so, Bob’s superpowers are revealed. Much to the CEO of O.X.E. Group Valentina Allegra de Fontaine’s utter delight, the Sentry Project worked on Bob — giving him superhuman powers that could overpower even the strongest Avenger. Valentina’s dreams of power and acclaim were finally coming to fruition. All she had to do was learn how to control Bob and sever him from Yelena and the others.

Perhaps Bob’s lifelong battle to feel loved, worthy, adequate, and enough could finally be won with his newfound hero abilities. Like Alexei said, “There is no higher calling.” Even Yelena is finding purpose and meaning through the haphazardly assembled team of misfits, individuals who are willing to put aside their remorse of being bad people for the sake of saving Bob.

But Valentina is more than willing to exploit Bob’s insecurities for her own gain. “You are perfect,” she whispers sweetly to him. Bob’s new hero purpose as the “Sentry” paves the way for a brand-new superiority complex, complete with lighter hair dye and a latex supersuit. Long gone are his feelings of insecurity and shame. He no longer cares for the team of delinquents who came to rescue him. Bob is a god now, he’s perfect, he doesn’t need anyone else, much less these lackluster friends!

Beaten to a pulp by the invincible Sentry, the Thunderbolts (named after Yelena’s pee-wee soccer team that never won a game) disband with a cacophony of hurried insults. Yelena’s hope is replaced with the all too familiar faces of anger and despair and resentment.

Alexei chases after his daughter, despite her continued attempts to push him away. She berates him, accuses him of being a shit father (which he is), until she finally reaches her breaking point and cries:

“Daddy, I’m so alone. I don’t have anything anymore. All I do is sit and look at my phone and think of all the terrible things that I’ve done. And then I go to work and then I drink and then I come home to no one and I sit and I think about all the terrible things I’ve done again and again and again.”

Alexei: “Yelena stop, we all have things that we regret.”

Yelena: “No, but I have so many.” […]

Alexei: “Yelena, when I look at you, I don’t see your mistakes. That’s why we need each other.”

This is the first time that Yelena has admitted to that which is the cause of her emptiness. Guilt over the little girl she was forced to kill during her Black Widow assassin training (when she was but a little girl herself). Shame over the many people that she’s hurt.

It’s a point-blank confession. It’s what’s isolated her for so long from the love and care of others. And her father’s response is a beautiful absolution, a gracious word of love. When I look at you, I don’t see your mistakes.

Just when you think you’ve reached the emotional peak of Thunderbolts*, they reveal another door and say, “Wait! There’s more!” Bob’s story isn’t over yet, the emotional turmoil has just begun (yay)!

The new Bob sees no need for Valentina anymore. While attempting to kill her, Bob is incapacitated by a failsafe kill switch. But it doesn’t kill him (that’d be too easy). Instead it awakens the “Void” — an alter ego who is the physical manifestation of Bob’s depression. I suppose this is what happens when you give a broken and sinful human being godlike powers (Captain America being the annoying exception).

“You can’t outrun the emptiness,” declares the Void. A desolate and frightening shadow, the Void extends darkness across New York City, turning all of its inhabitants into lifeless shadows (Seriously, why do people still live in NYC in the Marvel Universe!?). But they aren’t dead, no, we discover they are sent to what are essentially their own personal shame rooms.

While leading civilians to safety, Yelena finds herself at the dividing line between the real world and the shadow void. She takes a deep breath and enters the darkness in search of the real Bob.

Yelena navigates through her various shame rooms. She comes face to face with her mistakes as she watches a young Lena train at the Red Room. She fights a drunk version of herself who is attempting to drown her guilt at the bottom of the liquor bottle.

Yelena finally finds Bob in a quiet attic, above which a continuous loop of his father’s abuse is playing out in the dining room of his childhood home. He’s surprised to see her. He’s hiding, avoiding the pain as best he can. She asks him if he is going to just let the Void take over and he answers that there’s no use in fighting it. She gently responds:

“What I said to you before was wrong, Bob. You can’t stuff it down. You can’t hold it in all alone. No one can. We have to let it out, we have to spend time together. And even if it doesn’t make the emptiness go away, I promise you, it will feel lighter.”

Bob: “How do you know?”

Yelena: “Because it already has for me. We can find a way out of here together.”

Yelena has just fought her way through physical representations of her shame. But these rooms of her past, which used to define so much of her current sense of self, have now become only that: past.

The shift in thinking is not of her own doing but by an outside force. Her words aren’t those of self-help. We can believe her when she says, “You can’t hold it in all alone. We have to let it out,” because we’ve seen how her confession to her father (and his absolution) have restored her.

Resolved to leave the quiet attic together, Bob and Yelena are stopped by the Void’s attempts to keep them there. As if on cue, the rest of the Thunderbolts appear to save the day. They, themselves, have just battled through their own respective shame rooms to get to Bob and Yelena.

In order to escape the maze of darkness, the Thunderbolts must defeat the Void in Bob’s final shame room, the Sentry Project laboratory. The Void separates Bob from the rest of the team by trapping them under lab equipment. “The most shameful thing of all was thinking that you could be anything more than nothing,” the Void declares to Bob. It continues, “You think they care about you? You don’t matter. To anyone.”

The Void succeeds in egging Bob on as he repeatedly throws punches at the shadow entity. This is just what the Void wants though, to destroy any shred of hope, dim any shimmer of light within Bob. But the Thunderbolts can see that something is off, that the Void is only getting stronger the more Bob fights it.

It’s Yelena who breaks free first, running after Bob, embracing him, and proclaiming, “I’m here, you are not alone.” One by one, the rest of the Thunderbolts get out from under the metal traps, also running toward Bob to join in what may be the greatest group hug in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The all-powerful shadow god within Bob isn’t defeated with weapons or superpowers or mastery or repression. In fact, the emptiness isn’t overcome at all. The void (and Void) remains somewhat there inside Bob. But like Yelena said, it feels lighter. He isn’t carrying the weight of that darkness alone anymore. They’ve found a way out, together.