Why Marvel's Thunderbolts Killed [SPOILER], Explained By The Director

This post contains major spoilers for Marvel's "Thunderbolts*."

Marvel's "Thunderbolts" has arrived and it comes with some big surprises. We were introduced to a very powerful new character in the form of Lewis Pullman's Sentry. It was the relatively rare post-"Endgame" Marvel Cinematic Universe movie to not deal with the multiverse, for the most part. It also featured one of the most cold-blooded and definitive deaths in the history of the MCU.

Olga Kurylenko's Taskmaster first appeared in 2021's "Black Widow" and her return in "Thunderbolts" was a big part of the marketing from early on. However, as anyone who's seen the movie now knows, she didn't make it long. In the first act, Yelena Belova, John Walker, Ghost, and Taskmaster are sent by Val to an underground lab. Unbeknownst to any of them, they're all supposed to kill each other in an attempt to tie up loose ends. Before they all realize this, Ghost shoots Taskmaster in the head.

There were no fake outs. There was no return. Taskmaster was definitely killed. Especially since everything in that room was later burned to ash. Director Jake Schreier spoke with the folks at GamesRadar about the decision, explaining why they did what they did. Here's what he had to say about it:

"Obviously, it's a big decision. We felt like a movie like this needed something like that, where you're like, 'Okay, if they'll do that, they could do anything,' you know, and you don't really know exactly where the thing is going to go. It needed a bit of shock or surprise."

That reasoning makes sense. That death does make it clear the movie is willing to go to surprising places early on. Be that as it may, no other major characters bite the dust and none of that explains why it had to be Taskmaster, specifically. But it had to be someone.

Marvel, despite its best efforts, didn't do the greatest job of hiding the death. The trailer for "Thunderbolts" hardly featured Taskmaster, leading many to guess she was going to die. That proved to be correct. So it perhaps wasn't all that surprising to the overvant MCU faithful, but it probably carried some weight for the average moviegoer. Still, the speculation was something that was tough to ignore at a certain point, though Schreier and the team tried their best.

"Definitely, when we were making it, we ignored all of that. I didn't read anything," Schreier said. "I mean, I've read since then, and it's like, yeah, there's a long lead time of getting these movies out there, and people are definitely going to have their theories in the marketing, it's such a part of it."

The big spoiler for those who pay attention to this stuff came when Marvel made a big splashy announcement revealing the cast for next year's "Avengers: Doomsday." Nearly every single core cast member from "Thunderbolts" is returning, save for Kurylenko. That added even more fuel to the speculation fire. Speaking to that, Schreier revealed that he got some advice from Jon Watts, who directed Tom Holland's "Spider-Man" trilogy.

"Something that my friend Jon Watts told me, who has been through this, and I think maybe it was something Kevin [Feige] told him, is that when you sit in the theater and the lights go down, all of that stuff goes away, and you really want to try to not worry too much about what people are going to be bringing to the movie, and make sure that on a story level that stuff works."

For what it's worth, this movie has been met with some of the most positive reviews for any MCU movie in recent memory, perhaps rivaled only by "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3." So it does seem as though the movie itself is a ride people are enjoying, even if this death wasn't a huge surprise to certain audience members. 

"Thunderbolts" is in theaters now.