Warning: This post contains spoilers for Thunderbolts*.
Thunderbolts* introduces one of the more unassuming villains of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Some guy named Bob walking around barefoot in his pajamas.
Okay, he’s not just Bob. Played by Lewis Pullman, Bob is the subject of experimentation at the hands of Julia Louis-Dreyfus‘ CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. She hopes to create—and control—her own superhuman, and she recruits vulnerable test subjects to develop her own version of the supersoldier serum that turned scrawny Steve Rogers into brawny Captain America.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]But, as one of Val’s stooges points out to her in the movie, you inject someone purely good, responsible, and, well, like Steve Rogers with a mystery serum, and you get the ultimate super-soldier. You inject someone unstable with that same serum, and the results are less predictable. Here’s everything you need to know about Bob and his two alter-egos: Sentry and the Void.
Read more: Everything to Remember About All the Members of the Thunderbolts* Team
How does Bob become Sentry/the Void in Thunderbolts*?
Bob is not the only person that Val’s shady scientists experiment on. He’s just the only person to survive. Val tosses what she assumes is Bob’s corpse into a bunker to be destroyed along with other evidence of her wrongdoings.
When she becomes the subject of a congressional investigation, Val decides to torch the bunker with several of her personal assassins, including Florence Pugh’s Yelena, Wyatt Russell’s John Walker, and Hannah John-Kamen’s Ghost, inside. They stumble upon Bob, who, it is soon revealed, is immune to bullets, can fly, and—when he touches other people—can witness their darkest memories.
Bob struggles with mental health issues. We learn over the course of the film that his father was abusive, that Bob was once addicted to meth, and that he frequently indulges in dark fantasies. He tells Florence Pugh’s Yelena that he will have manic highs followed by terrible lows, often blacking out and waking up to find he’s done something terrible. The serum seems to exacerbate Bob’s symptoms and give him two personalities.
Val hopes to present Sentry as her own personal achievement to the world. She even workshops his costume, his hair, and his name. At first, Sentry revels in his newfound purpose as a superhero whom Val describes as more powerful than all the Avengers rolled into one. He indulges in delusions of grandeur, calling himself a god. (Though, in fairness to Bob, one of the Avengers is a god, so by Val’s own logic, Sentry must too be a deity.)
When Val realizes she’s lost control of Sentry and her team tries to eliminate the new superhero with a kill switch, they instead create a supervillain called The Void. The Void, at first blush, appears to obliterate people from the streets of New York with a flick of his hand, turning them into shadows. In reality, he’s summoning them into a maze-like reality made up of his victims’ worst memories—as well as scenes from his own traumatic past. Ultimately, Yelena is able to navigate that space and help Bob escape his dark doppelgänger, thus saving the city.
Sentry officially becomes a member of the new super-team, briefly named the Thunderbolts after Yelena’s youth soccer team, and later rebranded as the New Avengers by Valentina. He will presumably fight alongside Yelena, her father Red Guardian (David Harbour), Avengers vet Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Captain American wannabe John Walker (Russell), and Ant-Man antagonist Ghost (John-Kamen) in future films.
What is the origin of Sentry and the Void in the comics?
In the comics, Robert Reynolds (a.k.a. Bob) suffers from schizophrenia and anxiety. He steals an experimental serum from his high school science professor in hopes of getting high off what he believes to be drugs. But the concoction turns out to be super soldier serum.
Bob becomes both a hero and the villain. His altruistic persona becomes known as Sentry, while his darker side takes the name the Void. The Void is able to disintegrate victims in a puff of shadow.
What will Sentry’s role be in Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars?
In a post-credits scene for Thunderbolts*, the newly formed super-team—now named the New Avengers—bemoans the fact that they’re largely made up of relatively under-powered “punchers and shooters.” Bob, who is sitting in a lounge chair in the corner enjoying a burger and a milkshake, apologizes for not being able to exercise his awesome powers. He does not yet know how to control them and fears the Void will emerge if he tries to fight invading aliens, HYDRA agents, or various other threats to Earth as Sentry.
But Bob may need to figure out how to manage his superpowers soon. At the end of the scene, Yelena pulls up satellite imagery of an inter-dimensional ship entering the Earth’s atmosphere. It has a Fantastic Four symbol on it. We know that movie, out later this year, takes place in a parallel universe. So their arrival in the world of the New Avengers may be a harbinger of scary things to come.
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