“You thought you were going to be some great saviors? You can’t even save yourselves,” says the shadowy supervillain in the new Thunderbolts* trailer that aired during Sunday’s Super Bowl. After breaking off Winter Soldier’s (Sebastian Stan) unbreakable vibranium arm and then throwing the Red Guardian (David Harbour) from a window atop Avengers Tower, it seems that Valentina Allegra de Fontaine’s (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) answer to Earth’s mightiest heroes are facing an Avengers-level threat — and they’re out of their league.
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“The Avengers are not coming,” CIA Director Val is shown testifying in the new footage. “Who will keep the American people safe?” A weary and beaten Black Widow (Florence Pugh) later tells the group that includes ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. operative Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and disgraced super-soldier John Walker (Wyatt Russell), “We can’t do this. No one here is a hero.”
The Marvel Cinematic Universe needs the greatest hero of them all. The golden guardian of good: the Sentry.
Who is Sentry in Thunderbolts*?
Created by writer Paul Jenkins and artist Jae Lee, Robert “Bob” Reynolds was introduced in 2000’s Sentry #1 as a forgotten superhero of Marvel’s Silver Age. “Are you ready for the secret of the Sentry?” asked the cover of Startling Stories featuring the Sentry, a comic-book-within-a-comic book that revealed the gold-clad Sentry’s origins as high school freshman “Robby” Reynolds.
After drinking a vial of an experimental chemical serum that granted him the “power of a million exploding suns,” Bob took the name Sentry, as it was his duty to “watch over the world.” The issue revealed that the Marvel Universe had forgotten Bob was an ally and a trusted friend of such superheroes as the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and the Hulk, as if he had never existed. Meanwhile, Bob attempted to warn the heroes of the return of his archnemesis: a dark entity known only as the Void. (Not the multiversal Void from Loki and Deadpool & Wolverine.)
It turns out that the secret of the Sentry is that Bob Reynolds and the Void are one and the same. The Void is the black shroud seen enveloping New York City in the Thunderbolts* trailer, and Bob is the shadowy figure “blipping” people out of existence in the blink of an eye.
What Is the Void? Thunderbolts* Villain, Explained
The comics eventually revealed that the mentally ill Bob, by ingesting the professor’s Golden Sentry Serum, created two personas: the golden boy superhero Sentry and his villainous counterpart the Void. As the Void, Bob subconsciously killed a million people in an attack that destroyed half a city, and he eventually turned to the Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards and the sorcerer Doctor Strange to make everyone forget the Sentry existed — the only way to prevent the Void from causing the end of everyone’s existence. Because the Void is the antithesis of the Sentry, the Void vanished when Bob’s superhero identity was effectively erased.
Bob was imprisoned in a S.H.I.E.L.D. maximum security prison for supervillains, but when the Sentry returned, so did the Void. In yet another twist to his convoluted backstory, the second Sentry miniseries revealed that Bob’s true persona is the malevolent Void, and it’s the Sentry who is the manufactured personality. In a retcon of Sentry’s origins, the serum that gave him the “power of a million exploding suns” was created by “Project Sentry,” a government operation that attempted to recreate the super-soldier serum that transformed Steve Rogers into Captain America.
“Robby” Reynolds was really a diagnosed schizophrenic with generalized anxiety disorder and agoraphobia who stole the Professor’s vial of Golden Sentry Serum to get high. When he became addicted to the power, Void told Sentry of the serum:
“If it could turn a meek young freshman into both the greatest hero and the greatest threat the planet had ever known, it could do the same to everyone. That’s the big secret, Sentry: we’re nothing special. That serum would have worked on anybody.” (It seems that the Sentry serum could be the MacGuffin vial that Yelena is seen holding in the trailer.)
After threatening all of existence, the Sentry/Void was recruited to Norman Osborn’s Dark Avengers: a H.A.M.M.E.R.-controlled squad of villains misappropriating the likenesses of the Avengers. He once threatened to destroy New Asgard at Osborn’s command, but the existence-endangering Void was struck down by a bolt of lightning summoned by Thor, and the thunder god laid him to rest in the heart of the Sun. So goes the Thunderbolts motto: “Justice, like lightning…”
Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts* strikes theaters on May 2.
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Image Credit: Marvel Studios
