Yelena isn’t the only one in search of a little hope.

Hell, you’d think it was as rare as Vibranium with how much Marvel continues to search for it. Dig for it. Strip-mine every last shred of goodwill they have, just for a glimmer of it. Six years since Avengers: Endgame and the conclusion of the Infinity Saga, Marvel is struggling to step out from behind the shadow cast by its past success and, more recently, its misguided foray into the staggeringly uneven Multiverse Saga. In that time, they have shown there is no heart-wrenching superhero send-off they won’t defile for it (Deadpool vs. Wolverine), no sacred timeline they won’t scrub from existence for it (Secret Invasion), and no beloved star they won’t beg, plead, and empty Disney’s vaults to recast for it (Robert Downey Jr.).

You’ve got to give it to them. Marvel’s latest solution to its Multiverse problem feels, well, fittingly Marvel. The plan? Cut back on Disney+. Rehire Robert Downey Jr. and the Russo Brothers. Make a few more Avengers films. Reboot — or, as Kevin Feige was quick to clarify, “reset” — the entire thing, and watch the profits roll in. It’s all very Avengers: Endgame, if you ask me. The whole ‘revisit the past to save the future’ thing. It’s also, in many ways, increasingly sad — watching Marvel slip into the same self-referential sinkhole that’s left Star Wars stranded on Tatooine, excitedly gesturing at worn-out relics like Jawas bartering for scrap out front of a Sandcrawler.

In many ways we should have seen this coming. You know, the moment Marvel Studios’ opening fanfare shifted from celebrating 80+ years of Marvel Comics to applauding 20+ years of its own cinematic accomplishments. Now, we have Kevin Feige hawking a return of old faces like the Junk Lady from Jim Henson’s 1986 classic — and recent rewatch — Labyrinth. Deep in the film’s final act, the Junk Lady attempts to convince Sarah to ignore her quest, her baby brother, and the wider world by plying her with her own possessions. It’s safer here — the scene suggests — in her bedroom. More than that, in her childhood.

“Oooh, what have we got here? Oh, your little bunny rabbit. You like your little bunny rabbit, don’t you? Yes, yes, yes, yes! Oooh, and there’s Betsy Boo. You remember Betsy Boo, don’t you?!”

Before Thunderbolts* fades to black, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) will be hoping you remember The Avengers, but for now she’s pinning all her hopes on Yelena and a handful of other outcasts (Ant-Man and the Wasp’s Ava Starr), killers (Black Widow’s Antonia Dreykov), and mercenaries (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier's John Walker) to clean up her involvement with the O.X.E. Group's "Sentry" superhuman project.

If you’re asking “Who the fuck are they?!” you’re not alone. Kevin Feige himself recently suggested the disconnect between Thunderbolts*’ critical reception and its performance at the box office was because audiences still felt that they “...had to have seen these other shows to understand who this is.” It’s a shame, really. That Thunderbolts* may be remembered as just another victim of the Multiverse Saga — “Have you seen Falcon & The Winter Soldier? What about Brave New World? Do you remember Taskmaster?!” — because Disney+ homework or not, it’s also a scrappy, soulful, messy middle finger to the multimedia streaming behemoth Marvel has become.

Director Jake Schreier’s solution to the hole in Marvel’s space-time continuum is as laughably simple as it is straightforward: he simply doesn’t care. There are no misguided celebrity cameos — pre- or post-credits. There is no wonky CGI from an overworked and underpaid visual effects department. And there is, quite simply, no Multiverse. The film’s asterisk is more than just a cute marketing ploy, then — it’s a mission statement: “*The Avengers are not available,” the posters read. The “So deal with it” must’ve been written in invisible ink.

That’s for better, more than worse. Rather than sacrifice another script at the altar of capital-P ‘Plot’, Jake instead sticks his head in the sand — or, rather, sticks his gaggle of antiheroes in a bunker deep beneath the sands of the Nevada desert — and sets them two challenges. The first, to escape. The second, and for this group, more challenging of the two? To simply get along.

Within minutes, Ava will have failed the latter in spectacular fashion, putting a gun to Antonia’s head and pulling the trigger, shooting her dead. From that moment on, Thunderbolts* never really lets up. It’s a zippy, self-contained thing: tight, and tightly confined. First, to the aforementioned bunker, where our team does, eventually, learn to get along. Later, to about a four-by-four city block as Sentry takes to the skies. And, most effectively, to the tortured psyches of Yelena, John, and Ava as Bob (Lewis Pullman) gazes into their eyes and their regrets stare back.

Bob’s alter ego Sentry will go on to cast a long, literal shadow over our heroes — all eerie sound effects and silhouettes — but his casting may well be a stroke of genius as far as modern Marvel is concerned. Harrison Ford? Pfft. Pedro Pascal? Please! Sacha Baron Cohen? Who needs him! We’ve got Florence Pugh. We’ve got the power of friendship. And we’ve got Bob.

Bob.

Bob, Bob, Bob.

We should talk a bit about Bob, shouldn’t we?

From the moment he tumbles out of his suspended animation pod he captures the hearts, minds, and thirst-tweets-turn-AO3-fanfiction of a jaded audience desperate for a reason to reinvest in this universe. Bob is kind. Bob is shy. And Bob is kind of like the Hulk, only instead of being angry he is sad, solemn, and likely self-medicates with 50mg of Sertraline, daily.

I know what you’re thinking. I was worried too. But where Marvel has traditionally played Bruce Banner’s anger issues for laughs, Thunderbolts* does, well, what Thunderbolts* does best, showing surprising restraint in never — outside of a throwaway line during the post-credits scene — belittling Bob’s struggles with his mental health. Instead, Schreier et al. accepts the responsibility that comes with telling a story about what it means to be human, as much as it does superhuman.

If Marvel’s last-ditch effort to connect with an audience that is increasingly feeling nothing for these films is to reflect our lives back to us on the big screen, it works here. It may not be subtle, but it works. In part, it’s the script. Eric Pearson, Lee Sung Jin, and Joanna Calo's work isn’t as nuanced as you’d like — its metaphors are as on the nose as its heart is on its sleeve, from the Void being the voice we all carry in our heads, to Bob literally beating himself up before the film is through — but it’s also more nuanced than you’d expect from what is essentially the film equivalent of kids smashing their toys together for two hours.

The other part is Florence Pugh and, to a lesser degree, Lewis Pullman. Pugh has always been capable of elevating an iffy script (Don’t Worry Darling) as much as she has of making stone-cold fucking classics out of stellar ones (Midsommar), but every time Bob and Yelena steal a glance they end up stealing the whole damn film.

The result is the most heartfelt, meaningful thing Marvel has committed to the screen — silver or otherwise — since Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. That’s not surprising, given Thunderbolts* shares much of the same found-family DNA that made James Gunn’s trilogy so damn moving before he, himself, moved on. In his absence, it would have been all too easy for Thunderbolts* to end up lost in his shadow — a jumbled retread of Gunn-isms — but between the banter and the budding friendships that develop over the course of the film, Thunderbolts* — like Yelena trying to be more than her bad decisions, like Bob trying to be more than his insecurities, and like this scruffy group of heroes trying to be more than just Avengers also-rans — manages to forge its own identity.

It’s all such a far cry from Yelena’s last outing in the too-many-years-too-late Black Widow: the film everyone wanted but no one wanted to make. All at once, Thunderbolts* is a better posthumous send-off for Natasha, it gives Yelena a chance to breathe, to grieve, and to mourn, and it lets its cast of forever unsung anti-heroes prove their worth in ways full seasons of Disney+ side-stories have repeatedly failed to deliver.

For one, it humanises — if not redeems — John Walker. It sees Red Guardian (David Harbour) straddle the line between insufferable and insufferably-embarrassing-father-figure. And Bucky! Good ‘ol Bucky. Though Marvel still doesn’t know what to do with him — he plays politician for much of the film — he still gets to Akira-slide in all leather-clad and Terminator-coded to drag our group kicking and screaming like a bunch of misbehaving schoolchildren into the film’s final act.

A hug.

A hug!

It ends with a fucking hug!

I shouldn't be so surprised, but then Marvel has always had a bit of a villain problem. From the underwhelming (The Marvels’ Dar-Benn) to the underdeveloped (Deadpool vs. Wolverine’s Cassandra Nova), building increasingly bigger and better bad guys is difficult when you’ve thrown Eternal-Deviant warlord Thanos (Josh Brolin) at your heroes and had them — mostly — save the day.

Maybe that’s why Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s Namor had to turn on Wakanda so quickly? Perhaps that’s why Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ Wanda had to spend a season’s worth of critically acclaimed television growing as a character only to give in to the Darkhold off-screen? And maybe that’s why so many of Marvel’s antagonists feel like they were betrayed by a writers’ room desperately searching for ways to manufacture a villain?

In all but one of Doctor Strange’s 14,000,605 possible futures, there’s likely a version of Thunderbolts*’ script that sees Bob suffer much the same fate — a supercut of uppercuts as he is left broken, bloody, and bruised. And it would have been a worse film for it. That’s why it’s so refreshing that Thunderbolts* of all films — a film where de Fontaine literally manufactures her perfect bad guy — should be the one to finally buck the trend. Compassion — not power — is the beating heart of this film, and it’s the reason Yelena finally stops running and instead faces the Void — within and without — as Sentry consumes first the people of New York City and then, block by block, the city itself. If she won’t do it for herself, then she’ll do it for her friends. She’ll do it for Bob.

That Thunderbolts* is able to execute a “We’ll do it with the power of friendship!” resolution to this story without it coming across as corny? Camp? Or contrived?! It’s nothing short of a miracle, and the most moving closing act we’ve seen from Marvel since Tony Stark fell to his knees, snapped his fingers, and broke the hearts of a generation. It’s also a testament to Thunderbolts*’ ability to have you caring about the sad guy from the bunker in the same “Aaaww, can we keep him?” kinda way that inspires his friends to eventually traverse the Void to save him from himself.

Critically, Thunderbolts* never sees Bob and his alter-ego, Sentry, as anything other than two distinct entities. Bob is not his grief, his sorrow, or his sadness. Neither is Yelena all of the bad things she has done. And this absolute fucking ramshackle mess of friends-turned-found-family is not defined by their past actions. They’re simply a part of them. As they are of us all. We are all worthy of redemption, Thunderbolts* says — of understanding, of patience, of being seen.

And, in our darkest moments, of simply being held.

Let’s posit, as Marvel likes to do, a What If…?

What if they manage to turn this thing around? What if a new Saga sans homework inspires a time-poor audience to reinvest? What if Marvel handles the return of Robert Downey Jr. with more reverence than Deadpool manhandled the corpse of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine?

If all of this comes to pass, audiences and critics will likely point to the upcoming The Fantastic Four: First Steps as the turning point. And who could blame them? The headlines all but write themselves. “A Fantastic First Step In The Right Direction,” they’ll read, as Disney successfully revives a thrice-reviled superhero film. “Pedro Pascal Is A ‘Fantastic’ Face For Marvel’s Next Phase,” they’ll say, as though Florence Pugh hasn't been standing right there the entire time. “A Fantastic Day For Marvel At The Box Office,” they’ll proclaim, as Marvel’s First Family pulls off perhaps the most impossible superhero act of all time — saving the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Yet those who look a little closer will find that it was in the unassuming smile of Lewis Pullman, the cinema-quieting eyes of Florence Pugh, and the found family of Jake Schreier’s oftentimes scrappy, sometimes forgettable, otherwise heartfelt underdog of a superhero flick that gave the Marvel Cinematic Universe something even more special: hope.

What Marvel does with it from here is up to them.

It’s hope with a caveat, then.

A qualifier, if you will.

An asterisk, even.

It is hope*