Thunderbolts*

Date

31.08.25

Thunderbolts* 2025

Rated PG13

Directed by Jake Schreier Production Company: Marvel Studios

Starring Florence Pugh, Lewis Pullman, Sebastian Stan, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell. Hannah John-Kamen

A group of misfit anti-heroes are forced on a mission to save the world from a darkness that threatens to wipe out the entire population

Opening Thoughts

When I was young, I had a terrible time in school. Not only was I bullied quite a bit, but my grades weren’t the greatest. Oh, I did pretty well in things like English (because, hello, reading!) and Home Ec classes (cooking food and all kinds of goodies, yes please!) However, in any of the science, language, or math courses, I just tanked. Especially math. From my earliest memories, it was just so hard for me to understand. My mom tried to help me by having me stay after school to get extra help from the teacher, and even getting me a tutor, but nothing seemed to work. By senior year, I was scraping by in biology and Spanish, and had been put into remedial math.

It was embarrassing and very frustrating, and so much of my struggles with schoolwork filled me with shame. Why couldn’t I figure out the math, or the chemistry, or the pronunciation? No one else seemed to struggle as much as I did. Why couldn’t I just do it?

I also seemed to have trouble concentrating. If a school topic didn’t interest me, I often would slip into a daydream, sometimes so powerfully that I didn’t even hear a teacher speaking directly to me. I was often described in my teacher’s assessments as “a dreamer” and “could accomplish a great deal if she stopped daydreaming.” Another thing I’d do was sneak books like the latest Baby-sitters’ Club or Sunfire romance into my desk to read during class because it was way more interesting than what the teacher was talking about, and I just couldn’t wait to find out what happened next. I can’t even tell you how many times I got busted for that.

Between the daydreaming and the non-comprehension, at one point, I finally decided that I was just stupid; there was no other conclusion I could come up with. I just had a broken, flawed brain that wasn’t really good for much. It began to affect my self-esteem and the way I saw myself. I saw myself as a failure and didn’t think I’d ever be able to succeed in anything. And I didn’t think anyone liked me because I didn’t like myself very much.

Thank goodness God doesn’t leave us as we are.

I found a great deal of feelings and sentiments that I could relate to in Marvel’s Thunderbolts*, a movie about a motley crew of flawed anti-heroes who each have their own special talents and are struggling with difficult memories from their pasts. Read on for what God showed me in Thunderbolts*!

SPOILERS for Thunderbolts* here!

Yelena Belova is on yet another mediocre mission for Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, and expresses her wish for something a little more “forward-facing.” Valentina agrees and gives her one last security mission: to go to a covert storage facility and dispose of agents trying to steal items there. When she arrives, she finds Ava Starr/Ghost, John Walker/US Agent, and Olga Kurylenko/Taskmaster already there. What none of them know is Valentina plans to kill them all by destroying the facility with them in it. Taskmaster is killed by Ava, but an amnesiac young man named Bob appears, and the group try to escape with him when they realize what is happening. Working together, they make their way to the exit, where Bob causes a diversion so the others can escape.

Valentina, who has arrived on site, sees Bob uninjured and flying, so she takes him to the Watchtower (formerly Avengers Tower) to find out more about him. She realizes he was a volunteer in the Sentry project and had been presumed dead. Valentina takes Bob under her wing to groom him as a super-soldier “Avenger” class superhero. Meanwhile, Yelena’s foster father, Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian, briefly rescues her, Ava, and John in the desert before they are taken into custody by Bucky Barnes/The Winter Soldier, who intends to have them testify against Valentina. Valentina’s assistant, Mel, tips off Bucky, and he takes the group to New York City instead, to find out what Valentina is up to with Bob and the revived Sentry project.

Once there, the group discovers that Bob has joined Valentina and taken on the persona of “Sentry.” Valentina attempts to have Sentry use his powers against the “Thunderbolts” (the name of Yelena’s childhood soccer team), but it backfires when he turns on her instead, and Valentina uses a “kill switch” to kill Sentry. Instead of killing him, Bob’s alter ego, The Void, takes over instead, trapping thousands of New Yorkers in a supernatural darkness of their own traumatic memories.

Yelena and the other Thunderbolts face their own dark pasts and find Bob inside the Void, where they help him fight against his destructive nature by embracing him in a group hug and affirming him as simply Bob. Bob manages to overcome the Void and free everyone. Valentina takes complete credit for the team’s efforts, naming them the New Avengers, even as Yelena tells Valentina, “We own you now.”

So What Did God Show Me?

-Yelena admits to feeling a “void” in her life since the death of her sister Natasha, feeling like she has no purpose. “Or maybe I’m just bored,” she says. Later, she visits her foster father Alexei, and asks him if he feels fulfilled and “What is the point of it all?” I think we’ve all had those moments where we wonder if anything we do is making a difference in the world. How will we make our mark on this planet, and how (if at all) will people remember us after we’re gone?

I think the beginning of answering this question is to first remember what our true identity is: before anything else, we are first sons and daughters of God. He made us, formed and shaped us, and we are very precious to Him. (Daniel 10:19) He also blessed each of us with talents and gifts to use to create with Him, and go forth in whatever passion He’s placed in our hearts. Once we realize what our passion is and how we can use our gifts to pursue that passion, finding your meaning and “point of it all” will fall into place.

-When she touches Bob, Yelena sees a vision of herself as a small child, when she was being trained as a Black Widow. Her first test was to lead a schoolmate into the line of fire of an assassin, and you can tell the memory is painful for her. What is odd is that she sees the strange young man, Bob, as a part of her vision.

I know there are certain memories I have that I don’t want to share with anyone; they contain shame and pain and regret, hurt and loss and fear, and I have no desire to relive them again, much less share them with anyone. But sometimes, inviting someone else into those painful places is how healing can begin. The enemy knows that if he can keep us isolated in our pain, he can keep us alone and enslaved in shame. But if we confess our past to God and trust that Jesus will bring restoration to those places, it can be immensely freeing. It also is a huge help to reach out to trusted friends, spiritual mentors and/or mental health professionals.

-Just minutes before, Ava, John, and Yelena were all trying to kill each other, and now they realize that the only way they are going to survive and escape is to work together. They may not like each other, or even trust each other, but they have to lay that aside for the time being and cooperate, or they are all going to die (which is exactly what Valentina is counting on).

God may put us in situations with people we can’t stand for one reason or another, but sometimes it’s those very situations which help us to grow, not only in our own strengths, but in others’ as well. Where we have our weak spots, others might be strong, and when we work together, we can link arms, fitting together like the pieces of a puzzle, and get the job done (just like the Thunderbolts did!)

-Bob suggests to Yelena that the others just go and save themselves and leave him behind, that they would be better off without him. Despite having just met him, Yelena looks at Bob with compassion, and shares how she herself struggles with similar feelings.

We’ve probably all felt that way at one time or another, haven’t we? Feeling like everyone would be better off without us, that we’re just a hassle and a problem, the weak link, the thing that’s holding everyone else back. I know I certainly have. When I was in high school, I was a part of a group project for a biology assignment. After the second meeting with my group, where I turned in my work, I found out later the leader of my small group had gone to the teacher and asked that I be graded separately from them so that my lesser-than work wouldn’t bring down their grades. I was completely humiliated and felt like a total garbage human being. I was the weak link. I was holding the rest of my group back, so they cut me loose.

Thank God He upheld me in that difficult time, and now I have a circle of friends that are incredibly dear and encouraging. We make it a practice to remind each other how important we are, how much we mean to each other, and the difference we’ve made in each other’s lives. I pray you can do the same, because you are important. You matter. You have a critical role to play in this world, in this time and place (Esther 4:14), and the world would NOT be better off without you. The world would be less, because you have an irreplaceable role to play. Remember that!

-John calls Bob “Bobby” several times, to which Bob mumbles to himself, “Always making things worse.” We find out later that being called Bobby triggers Bob’s memories of his father hitting his mother, and when he tried to intervene, his mother responded, “Bobby, don’t! You’re just making it worse!” Bob has taken that on as an identity, this negative reaction his mother had to his well-intended actions.

I remember one time when I was younger and I was working on homework. My mom, bless her, had been sitting with me for about an hour, patiently trying to help me work my way through each problem, but I was having trouble, and kept getting things wrong. I was embarrassed because she was trying so hard to guide me through the work, but I couldn’t seem to understand no matter how she laid it out for me. Finally my mom kind of reached the end of her patience with me, leading her to spew in frustration, “Oh Sarah! Why can’t you just do it??” To this day, I still find myself at times, when presented with a troublesome or intensely frustrating situation growling, “Oh, why can’t I just do it?” For a large part of my life, I was finding my identity in that phrase. I couldn’t do it, I was broken, I was a failure. I had let my mom down. But it wasn’t true, and I’m not a failure. My Father God sees me as whole, beautiful, capable, and precious, and His opinions are the only ones that count.

-Valentina at one point tries to convince Bob that Yelena and the others were never his friends, that they were bad people, criminals, who do not care about him at all. The enemy tries to do the same thing with us, to get us to listen to his lies. “I’m your only real friend. You should never have trusted them; they’ll never love you.” “I know everything about you, and I still want you to be my guy! Isn’t that what you want? To be accepted, to be chosen?” Valentina, like the enemy, is a master of manipulation, and she knows just the right words to use to turn Bob’s head, to reach those sore spots in his soul. The enemy does this with us, but it is critical to remember that everything he speaks, even if it sounds like the truth, is ultimately a lie, and his only goal is to use us if he can, then destroy us. (Genesis 3:1-5) Only God speaks truth that we can trust.

-One of the most powerful scenes in the movie for me is when Alexei is pursuing a despairing Yelena. I’m adding the conversation here because it’s just so great! (The emphasis is mine.)

“Yelena! Little one!”

”Go away!”

“No, I will not!”

“Well, then chase me forever.”

“Fine, I will! Because that’s what family does!”

“You disappeared!”

“I didn’t think you wanted me.”

“I did.”

“I’m late…but I’m here now.”

“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, come home to no one, and I sit and think about all the terrible things I’ve done again and again, and I go crazy!”

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

“No, but I have so many! (Yelena bursts into tears) My first test at the Red Room… Anya, she was just a child, she was so small…”

“So were you. I know. I know they were dark times… very, very dark times. but… before, you were such a special little girl. Did you know this? You walked into room and made it bright. You felt a lot of joy.”

“I don’t remember that feeling.”

“You were so kind. Do you remember why you want to be goalie on your terrible soccer team?”

“I…so I didn’t have to run as much.”

“No. Maybe that too, but you told me, ‘I want to be the one everyone can rely on if they make a mistake.’ That Lena is still in you. I still see her.”

“I don’t.”

“You’re stuck. You’re alone. You look only at the bad. When I look at you, I don’t see your mistakes. That’s why we need each other.”

“Okay, that was really good.”

The thing I absolutely adore about this conversation is that when Yelena is sad and lonely and feels like she has no one, she wants her daddy. Yelena, a Red Room assassin who’s afraid of nothing and no one! Alexei isn’t perfect, but he is who she wants when things get rough. When she feels like she’s a horrible person who does horrible things, and she just can’t handle her life, she goes to her daddy for help. And her dad, her dear dad, reminds her of who she truly is, and how he sees her (which is better than she sees herself), and that’s all that matters.

Friends, this is us and God. Right here, just like this. He will pursue us. He will not leave us. He wants us to pour our hearts out to Him and bring Him all our hurts, like a little child with a skinned knee. And He listens and reminds us we’re not alone. Most importantly, He tells us how He sees us, and that we are good. If you’re hurting, dear friend, bring it to your Abba Father and let him wash your wounds with truth and love. Learn to see yourself through His eyes, because His view of us is the only one that truly matters.

-The Thunderbolts have all entered into the Void to find Bob and help him overcome the darkness within himself. Yelena tells him, “You can’t stuff it down, you can’t go through it all alone, no one can. You have to let it out, we have to spend time together. And even though it doesn’t make the emptiness go away, I promise it will feel lighter.” Yelena has learned that she can’t handle her own darkness alone, none of us can. They figure out that the only way for all of them to escape the Void is to face Bob’s “worst room,” his darkest memories, the absolute last place he wants to go, let alone show anyone.

It can be terrifying to be so vulnerable. To expose our own personal darknesses to others is to be naked and defenseless in front of them, not to mention risking further hurt. But we will never be able to heal ourselves all by ourselves. We have to seek help. We can’t do it alone; we were never meant to. Just like salvation is unattainable all by ourselves (we need Jesus), healing is unattainable without help. And the enemy will try to lie to you, saying things like the Void said to Bob. “You think they care about you? You don’t matter to anyone.” This is because his desire is to keep us enslaved.

But Yelena and the others, at the critical moment, surround Bob in a physical show of support, uphold him and remind him he’s not alone. None of us are. Everyone is dealing with their own form of darkness, everyone has a “shame room,” and you’re not the only one struggling. It’s only together we can overcome, like the Thunderbolts did. Remember, there will be times that you can encourage and support others, just like they can encourage and support you when you need it. We are here to help each other.

Closing Thoughts

I spent most of my life thinking I was broken and faulty, and that there was something really wrong with me. Finally, last year, at age forty-nine, I finally summoned up the courage to mention to a friend that I had the sneaking suspicion that I had attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, otherwise known as ADHD. She suggested I talk to my doctor about it. My doctor gave me a screener full of questions which really made me sit back and take a good look at myself, the way my mind worked, and how I tended to act in certain situations. I answered them as honestly as I could, and the doctor, after assessing me, agreed: I had ADHD.

My whole life, I thought I was flawed, just a junk person made up of faulty parts that didn’t work. That I wasn’t good enough. That I just couldn’t do it. It took me being brave enough to seek help and entertain the possibility that maybe I wasn’t a complete screw up. Once I got my diagnosis, I started doing a lot of research on ADHD, and wow, was my mind blown. Everything, and I mean everything, I read explained so much about my life, both when I was younger, and now. Back in the 80s, ADHD wasn’t diagnosed as much as it is now, and it was mainly a diagnosis that was assigned to “spazzy” young boys who couldn’t sit still. I wasn’t that kind of ADHD, I was the distracted kind of ADHD. But as I began to learn more about ADHD, I began to learn more about myself as well.

One thing is I get distracted and have a massive tendency to “squirrel.” But, I also have the ability, when something does grab my attention, to laser focus in on it. I’m also great at paying attention to details. And while I do tend to forget things a lot, especially something I’ve just been told, I also have a wonderful talent for remembering things, like people’s birthdays and what they wanted. I’m good at thinking outside the box and can be very organized, depending. And I’m massively creative. It’s all part of the wonder of me.

The bottom line is, I’m not broken. I’m not faulty. I’m not stupid. I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and I have my own special superpowers that no one else does!

You’re a wonderful person too. No one is perfect, no matter what Instagram would try to make us believe. We all have the weird and wonderful parts of ourselves that we’d rather keep hidden. But nothing is hidden from God; He knows you and everything about you, and He has a purpose and a destiny for our lives. You matter, and when He made you, it was good – even your “weird” bits. “Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.” – Psalm 139:14 Remember that! I encourage you to seek someone to stand beside you on your journey…there is nothing wrong with seeking help! It doesn’t make you less of a person if you need help, I promise. Even superheroes need to know they’re not alone.

What part of your life would you see in the Void? What feelings does that evoke in you?

Reading: Psalm 139 (especially verse fourteen!)

Challenge (This is a big one, but I know you can do it!):

Zero in on the places in your life where you’ve embraced a false identity born out of pain and shame. That’s not you. Bring it before the throne of God, and leave it there, and receive your true identity as His son or daughter. Seek spiritual and/or mental help if needed. You don’t have to do this alone.