Thunderbolts* Trailer Includes a Sneaky Callback to Captain America: The Winter Soldier

The just-released trailer for Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts* featured a funny final moment — but some fans have noticed that in addition to being amusing on its face, that moment was a callback to one of the most popular movies in the whole of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In the final seconds of the trailer, Bucky Barnes is tailing a vehicle in which the rest of the Thunderbolts are riding. He fires a shot at them, and it totally destabilizes the entire rear end of the car.

That’s because he’s using the same gun he used to take out Nick Fury’s car in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. It’s not exactly an Easter egg — I mean, he’s just using gear that is established to be part of his canonical arsenal — but it’s certainly a cool thing to see back in action after a decade away.

Thunderbolts* brings together a batch of former Marvel antagonists, including Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), Red Guardian (David Harbour) and U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell). They’re gathered, seemingly, by Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and the team up…doesn’t seem to be a smooth one, as evidenced by the cannon shot in question. 

The characters’ competing interests and loyalties repeatedly boil over in the teaser trailer, but it does seem like Val (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is both the person who currently owns (or at least operates) Avengers Tower, and that she is putting together her own, darker version of The Avengers. Could that be what the Thunderbolts asterisk is about?

Depending on timing and cutting, it could be that the former villains are screwing each other over throughout, or just that all this fighting happens before the team actually comes together. It’s hard to guess what is more likely at this point.

It’s definitely smart to expect some kind of twist, though; the Thunderbolts brand is built largely on a single, spectacular twist from back in the first-ever Thunderbolts #1. After being introduced as a fairly generic superhero team made up of new and original characters, the Thunderbolts retired to their HQ in the last few pages and revealed themselves to be a group of existing villains who were running a long con.

“We are not the good guys,” Harbour said in a recent interview. “We are not capable. [We’re not] Captain America responsible. We don’t show up on time. Punctuality is not our strong suit.”

Thunderbolts* will arrive in theaters on May 2nd.