Thunderbolts*: Who Is Bob? Marvel’s The Sentry Explained

To paraphrase Fight Club: “In Project Thunderbolts*, we have no names.” But rather than Robert “Bob” Paulson, his name is Robert “Bob” Reynolds. “I’m Bob,” stammers Lewis Pullman’s Bob in the just-released trailer for Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts*, where Black Widow (Florence Pugh), U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) draw their weapons on the disheveled, patient gown-clad Bob deep within an underground vault. 

The trailer is set to the Pixies song “Where is My Mind” which, not coincidentally, also features in Fight Club, David Fincher’s 1999 cult classic about a seemingly unassuming man (Edward Norton) whose mental illness manifests as a split personality: his dark and violent alter-ego, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). If glimpses of an “S”-shaped belt buckle and an “S” symbol didn’t tip you off, these are all references to The Sentry, Bob’s solar-powered superhero persona in the comics.

Are you ready for the secret of… The Sentry? You asked for it, loyal readers! Introducing the greatest hero of them all — The Golden Guardian of Good!

Introduced in the pages of 2000’s Sentry #1 by writer Paul Jenkins and artist Jae Lee, Bob Reynolds was the greatest Marvel hero you’d never heard of. A Jack Kirby-inspired Silver Age comic book-within-a-comic, titled Startling Stories featuring The Sentry, revealed the Sentry’s origins as high school freshman “Robby” Reynolds. After drinking a vial of an enigmatic professor’s secret formula — an experimental chemical serum that granted him the “power of a million exploding suns” — Bob took the name Sentry, as it was his duty to “watch over the world.”

You want to remember, Sentry, but you can’t. Something happened… it was something very bad.

Only Bob Reynolds remembered his heroic exploits saving the world alongside the likes of the Fantastic Four and the Avengers, Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the Hulk. As the forgotten hero investigated what made everyone forget he ever existed, Bob warned of the return of his arch-nemesis: a dark entity known only as The Void.

Now is a time for vigilance.

After Bob triggered the memories of Reed Richards, the 2001 one-shot Sentry/The Void #1 revealed the truth about the Sentry: Bob Reynolds is the Void. By ingesting the Golden Sentry Serum, Bob’s mentally ill psyche created two personas — the golden boy superhero and his villainous alter-ego — and as the Void, Bob subconsciously killed a million people in an attack that destroyed half a city.

The Sentry. If we ever remember him… in the name of humanity, promise me you’ll do whatever you can to make us forget. 

To prevent the end of existence, Bob conspired with Reed and thesorcerer Doctor Strange to make everyone forget the Sentry existed using a mesmeric induction device to transmit a virus that effectively erased him from existence. As the antithesis of the Sentry, the Void vanished alongside Bob’s superhero alter-ego.

That’s Robert Reynolds. He went by the name of The Sentry. He’s, maybe, according to Reed Richards, the most powerful superhero on the planet Earth.

Bob resurfaced as a prisoner of The Raft, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s maximum security prison for supervillains, in New Avengers #1 by Brian Michael Bendis and David Finch. The Sentry’s return unleashed the Void, who fought the combined forces of the Avengers, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Inhumans, and S.H.I.E.L.D. until the mutant psychic Emma Frost was able to penetrate Bob’s psyche and reveal how the mutant named Mastermind used his psionic powers to effectively retcon Sentry’s existence in the public’s mind.

The 2005-2006 miniseries Sentry Vol. 2 eventually revealed that Bob Reynolds’ true personality is the malevolent Void, and that the Sentry is the manufactured persona. In Sentry #8, by Jenkins and artist John Romita Jr., Sentry’s secret origin was altered again with the revelation that the serum that gave him his powers was the creation of “Project Sentry,” an attempt to recreate the super-soldier serum that transformed Steve Rogers into Captain America. 

“Robby” Reynolds was really a diagnosed schizophrenic with generalized anxiety disorder and agoraphobia who stole the Professor’s vial of serum to get high. Becoming addicted to the power, Void told Sentry: “If it could turn a meek young freshman into both the greatest hero and the greatest threat the planet had ever known, it could do the same to everyone. That’s the big secret, Sentry: we’re nothing special. That serum would have worked on anybody.”

And this is how it goes for you: always the Sentry, ever the Void. So it will be until the end of time… you must remain vigilant, for you are humanity’s only hope.

After former Thunderbolts leader Norman Osborn assembled a H.A.M.M.E.R. squad of villains misappropriating the likenesses of Earth’s mightiest heroes, including Spider-Man (Scorpion), Hawkeye (Bullseye), Wolverine (Daken), and Ms. Marvel (Moonstone), the Sentry joined Osborn’s Avengers*: the Dark Avengers. When the Void returned during Osborn’s siege on new Asgard in the four-issue series Siege, the New Avengers battled the Void, who briefly reverted back to Bob upon defeat. The Void pleaded with the Avengers to kill him, so Thor summoned a bolt of lightning that killed Bob, and the thunder godlaid his remains in the heart of the Sun.