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Midway through the latest trailer for Thunderbolts*, CIA chief Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (aka Julia Louis-Dreyfus for the civilians) welcomes the titular team into her headquarters. “The place wasn’t cheap, but it’s got good optics,” she quips.
She’s not kidding. We first saw that place in 2012’s The Avengers, a movie that’s filled with hero shots. In the final one, which is set to Alan Silvestri’s rousing theme, we see Stark Tower, a monument to Tony’s hubris and individualism, rechristened Avengers Tower, a symbol of what can happen when different personalities come together for the greater good. And even though the team traded the building for a compound by the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Avengers Tower still looms large in the public mind. For that reason, Marvel has been cagey about the fate of the Tower after Avengers: Endgame, with the studio refusing to give details about the current occupant.
Thanks to the trailer, we finally know for certain that Valentina (or, more accurately, the U.S. government) bought Avengers Tower. But we still don’t know why. The rest of the trailer consists mostly of footage we’ve seen before, plus a full Bucky action sequence in which he takes down an armored convoy pursuing the team before attacking his (eventual) teammates.
However, one additional beat does stand out. Late in the trailer, Bucky (Sebastian Stan) and David Harbour‘s Red Guardian bicker about the name of their team. “We can’t call ourselves that,” says an exasperated Bucky, but his Russian friend is undeterred. “The Thunderbolts! It’s a cool name.”
This focus on the team’s name draws attention to the asterisks on the title. As we’ve guessed before here at Den of Geek, the Thunderbolts are actually the Dark Avengers. Well, Dark Avengers wasn’t the name of the team, but rather the comic book that featured the team’s adventures. No, the team was named “the Avengers.” In Dark Avengers, Spider-Man‘s foe Norman Osborn wins over the public trust and becomes Director of SHIELD. Using that trust, Norman builds his own version of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, with baddies like Bullseye and Venom masquerading as Daredevil and Spider-Man.
Valentina’s purchase of Avengers Tower likely serves the same purpose. With the Avengers disbanded since losing three of their founding members in Endgame, the world has no Mightiest Heroes. The MCU hasn’t done much to show a major threat that calls for the Avengers. For comparison, in the comics, Norman Osborn establishes himself fighting Skrulls in Secret Invasion; in the MCU, not even Nick Fury remembers what happened in Secret Invasion. Still, Valentina suggests it’s all about optics.
Even if the public at large isn’t ready to trust a team whose most famous member is a disgraced former Captain America, the purchase of Avengers Tower can solve a lot of Valentina’s problems. It can lend legitimacy to her team, erasing the skepticism anyone might have about her black-ops group. To Valentina, that kind of public support is worth any price tag. And it gives yet further credence that the end titles sequence will reveal a name for the movie darker than just “Thunderbolts.”
Thunderbolts* sneaks into theaters on May 2, 2025.
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