The MCU just made watching its next movie pointless

Doctor Doom is finally on his way to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and although he has a familiar face thanks to Robert Downey Jr. stepping up to play him, we’re expecting a very different performance from his time as Iron Man. The Russo Brothers are also back to helm the next two Avengers movies, with 2026’s Doomsday and 2027’s Secret Wars tipped to be a potential ‘reset’ to the sometimes stagnating MCU. There’s still a while before we get there, and ahead of Doomsday, the much-hyped Thunderbolts* is poised to round off Phase 5.

Tipped to be the MCU’s answer to James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, Jake Schreier’s upcoming ensemble tasks a rag-tag group of former villains and anti-heroes with doing the dirty dealings of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Valentina Allegra de Fontaine before things inevitably go wrong. The obvious comparisons to The Suicide Squad had us worried about a high body count, but thanks to the recent Doomsday cast announcement, it’s seemingly revealed exactly who lives and who dies. With this being the case, is there any need to tune into Thunderbolts*?

The trouble with Taskmaster

Even before Doomsday revealed who will and won’t be starring in the next Avengers movie, we were rightly worried about Olga Kurylenko’s Taskmaster. Reprising her role as the gender-flipped Black Widow villain, Kurylenko rejoins co-stars Florence Pugh and David Harbour. Not that we really needed more proof that Taskmaster isn’t long for this world, but Yurylenko was the only member of the main Thunderbolts* cast not to appear in the 5.5-hour Avengers: Doomsday stream that revealed everyone from Tenoch Huerta Mejia’s Namor to Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm, Tom Hiddleston’s Loki to Rebecca Romijn’s Mystique. 

It’s true that Dreyfus isn’t listed, so it’s possible that Val will get her comeuppance despite having purchased the old Avengers Tower. As for Taskmaster, her dwindling presence in the Thunderbolts* trailers and marketing is starting to make sense given the Doomsday reveal. If you weren’t already convinced, others have noticed how a recent trailer seemingly took her out of a key scene at Val’s HQ. Other trailers have shown Sentry’s ability to ‘delete’ people, while Val warning that he’s stronger than all of the Avengers rolled into one means Taskmaster might fall victim to the power of his alter ego as The Void.

Posting on Reddit, one skeptic responded to the trailer omission and wrote: “Marvel pretty much just sealed the fate of this character in the movie. Yesterday they announced Sebastian Stan, Florence Pugh, Wyatt Russell, David Harbour, Hannah John-Kamen and Lewis Pullman in the Avengers: Doomsday cast, but Olga Kurylenko (Taskmaster's actress) was blatantly absent, and now, Marvels posts this..." Examining what we know about Thunderbolts*, it doesn’t look like Taskmaster makes it out of the room where the team seemingly first meets and the various baddies realize they’ve been set up. The Watchtower scene was the only real evidence that she wasn’t going to be an early casualty, although some think Taskmaster can still be saved.

Others have pointed out how the smart-talking Taskmaster from the comics would get the hell out of there at the smallest sign of trouble, others think she’ll double-cross the team and is effectively a mole for Valentina. Still, that doesn’t mean she won’t get killed off if she’s eventually exposed, while the fact she’s notably absent from Doomsday could be the final nail in the coffin. For the vocal minority of Taskmaster haters, they’re cheering her untimely demise. Not just due to some people having a problem with a gender-flipped Taskmaster, others were disappointed with how Black Widow turned the iconic Spider-Man villain into a brain-washed mute. In general, the Taskmaster reveal is slammed as one of the MCU’s worst twists, with some asking for something like the upcoming Spider-Man 4 to introduce a more comic-accurate version of him. 

Then again, the MCU is known for calling our bluff, and like the Infinity War trailer included Hulk or Spider-Man: No Way Home edited out Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, there’s a glimmer of hope that this is just some trailer misdirection. Still, with Taskmaster hardly being up there with Josh Brolin’s Thanos in terms of being memorable additions to the MCU, she’ll likely become collateral damage so that Thunderbolts* will raise the stakes. Similarly, cladding the likes of Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes in some serious plot armor does take away some of the mystique surrounding Thunderbolts*. The only other idea is that the multiversal nature of Doomsday means some of the other might die, with a variant version popping up. Imagine the gasps in cinemas when Sentry tears David Harbour’s Red Guardian in half, only to see him return in Doomsday. As for Taskmaster, it increasingly looks like a short and silent stint for Kurylenko in the MCU.