WARNING: There are spoilers for Thunderbolts* ahead! Ostensibly, the death of a major Marvel Comics character in the MCU should be a huge factor in the movie it takes place in, but writer Eric Pearson said he was not really involved in the decision to kill off Taskmaster at all. The former Black Widow with an uncanny ability for mimicry was shot by Ghost and left behind unceremoniously in the first act of Thunderbolts*, and Pearson told ComicBook that it was entirely out of his hands. The writer said that he had left Taskmaster alive through the entire movie in his final draft, which went through some re-writes by Joanna Calo during filming.
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“That was the one biggest change,” Pearson said. “. When they started shooting, I was back in Burbank working on Fantastic Four. When I saw the cut, the biggest change from my draft to later was Taskmaster’s death. Taskmaster lived out the movie in the last draft that I left them. I was as shocked as you were.”
While Pearson wasn’t there for the shoot, he did get a chance to talk to director Jake Schreier about this change recently. “He wanted to raise the stakes and have a shock moment, which also says, ‘This is a dangerous world,’” he said, paraphrasing the director. “We say these are bad people, but we see them be good quite a bit in this movie. Having a moment where it’s like, ‘They are coming from a moment where they have done heartless things…’ But I did not make that call and I was quite surprised when I saw it.”
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Fans were also shocked this weekend when they finally got out to see Thunderbolts* for themselves. The marketing for the movie definitely includes Taskmaster quite a bit, making it feel like she’ll be there throughout the movie. Thankfully, she did get a lot of time to shine in her final scene of the MCU, and her death clearly had an impact on both Yelena and Ghost as the story went on.
Including Taskmaster on a team with Yelena and Red Guardian would have made this movie feel a little crowded with Black Widow characters, outnumbering the other titles that were crossing over here. On top of that, many fans were not loving the MCU’s remix of Taskmaster. She was vastly different from her comic book inspiration, and many were already hoping for a reboot after the multiversal dust has settled.
Thunderbolts* is in theaters now around the U.S.
