It's hard to follow up on the climactic battle between the Avengers (and all of the MCU) against Thanos - that goes for both in the MCU and in the real world. In both cases, there was a power vacuum in the years following as the Avengers disassembled and we all tried to pick up the pieces. For Marvel Studios, it's being able to go back to regular filmmaking after two back-to-back years of event filmmaking with Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. But after six years and more than six MCU movies and TV shows, they've done it.

We're not saying Thunderbolts* is the beginning of a new age for Marvel Studios - but it was great in all the ways that matter. Much in the same way 2008's Iron Man had lowered expectations due to what had come before, Thunderbolts* was able to underpromise and overdeliver, and the average critical review ranked it amongst the three best MCU of all time. While the world now watches it, and others who may have said 'I'll wait until it hits Disney+' now reconsider their options, I'll now do my best to lay out what it means - and what comes next.

Spoilers ahead for Marvel Studios' Thunderbolts*.

What Thunderbolts* means for the MCU story

While I defer to my colleagues who wrote the most excellent Thunderbolts* ending explained for the full version of this, over its 126-minute runtime managed to move the broader MCU story forward in several key ways. Let's go:

• Puts the long-simmering Valentina Allegra De Fontaine recruitment storyline, which began in 2021, to boil with those characters working for her then rebelling against her to start the Thunderbolts*
• Reveals the buyer of the Avengers Tower, first mentioned in 2017's Spider-Man: Homecoming, was de Fontaine, culminating with it now being rebranded as the Watchtower, base to the New Avengers
• Established the first proper, public superhero team to fill the void of the dissolution of the Avengers in Endgame with the New Avengers (sorry, Eternals)
• Mentioned Sam Wilson's Captain America could create his own team of Avengers
• Introduced the Fantastic Four (or maybe just their ship, with others inside) to the main MCU universe

There are other innovations, but I'll leave that for a future section.

In many ways, Thunderbolts* was the end of the post-Endgame chapter of the MCU - by tying up some of the big storylines, establishing a new status quo going forward, and doing it all in a nice package that was also a great movie.
 

What Thunderbolts* means for the MCU style

In many ways, Thunderbolts* is a street-level Guardians of the Galaxy team - and at one time, James Gunn was considered to oversee a Thunderbolts MCU adaptation for Marvel Studios before Disney fired him and he found The Suicide Squad. But with Gunn gone, Marvel Studios found their solution in Jake Schreier - a close confidante of their Spider-Man trilogy's Jon Watts - who brought with him some of the creative minds from a Netflix show he helped steer called Beef. 

And Beef beefed up Thunderbolts*.

Much in the same way the Russo brothers were 'discovered' by Kevin Feige in their work on the Community TV series and then hired them (and associate staff) for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Thunderbolts* began to be a bit of a Beef reunion; after Schreier's hiring, Beef creator Lee Sung Jin was later hired to do script rewrites, Beef co-star Steve Yuen was everyone's original choice to play Bob/The Sentry, Beef writer Joanna Calo contributed to the script, and they also added Beef's production designer Grace Yun and art director Michael Hersey.

“With Beef as our North Star, we just really believed that there was an opportunity to tell a story about that internality and still have a lot of comedy and action for something that feels big and universal,” Schreier told The Hollywood Reporter. “It was always Sonny’s idea that these kinds of stories are not niche anymore, and even if it feels odd to have a summer blockbuster with that at its heart, it can work and it can make sense.”

In many ways, Thunderbolts* was able to stop trying to be a version of what came before in the MCU (despite the asterisk) and be something different, while at the same time being true to its parentage.  
 

What Thunderbolts* means to the MCU schedule

Thunderbolts is the last movie in Phase 5 of the MCU - yeah, it seems that wasn't played up as much as you'd think. While Disney+'s Ironheart will be the last project in MCU Phase 5, Thunderbolts* does well in counter-acting the relative miasma we've all felt - and also signals in very broad terms we're getting out of this liminal post-Endgame state and into what's next.

(Maybe the New Avengers name change to Thunderbolts* was a hint?)

The MCU schedule going forward into Phase 6 - and the culmination of the Multiverse Saga - is stacked, to say the least:

• June 24, 2025: Ironheart, season 1
• July 25, 2025: The Fantastic Four: First Steps
• August 6, 2025: Eyes of Wakanda, season 1
• December 2025: Wonder Man, season 1
• March 2026: Daredevil: Born Again, season 2
• May 1, 2026: Avengers: Doomsday
• July 31, 2026: Spider-Man: Brand New Day
• May 7, 2027: Avengers: Secret Wars

There's a DIsney+ show - Vision Quest - floating around like the Vision is oft to do, with anticipation for it to land in there. But besides that, Phase 6 is leaning hard on established franchises - with Wonder Man being the sole series not a spinoff of something else (but then again, it's about a superhero actor, so it's kind of a spinoff of everything in the MCU.)

With the Thunderbolts cast already slated to be a core part of the tentpole 2026 film Avengers: Doomsday as the New Avengers, with a base, a jet, and snazzy logos, it's easy to see how Thunderbolts 2 (or New Avengers) could be a film you see sooner than you think - especially given Disney has reserved some late 2027 and 2028 dates already for what comes next.

Consider this a meta post-credits scene for Marvel fans - the four key articles you need to read next to continue the thrills:

• How to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe in release or chronological order
• The best Marvel Comics stories of all time
• All the MCU movies ranked from best to worst
• Our weekly Marvel insider's column, Marvel Matters