Marvel Studios has delivered many fantastic movies over the years, but Thunderbolts* was something special. The 2025 film received critical acclaim for its extremely well-written script and layered performances while also being a truly entertaining blockbuster. All of those things were wins that the Marvel Cinematic Universe was in real need of at the time.
Among the many things that audiences were receptive to were the returns of certain beloved MCU characters and the awesome dybmaic that developed between them. Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Red Guardian (David Harbour), and Bob (Lewis Pullman) proved to be quite the team, saving the day and hitting us in the feels at the same time (all in a day's work for the Thunderbolts!).
But there was one element of the movie that divided people (and rightfully so!), and it all had to do with the treatment of one specific returning character: Taskmaster (played by Olga Kurylenko).
Taskmaster's death in Thunderbolts* was designed to highlight the stakes
If you watched Thunderbolts* in movie theaters or at home on Disney Plus, you likely heard a number of gasps (from either you or the audience around you) when Taskmaster shockingly died in the film's opening battle. With Yelena, John Walker, Ghost, and Taskmaster herself trapped in the vault by Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, each one of them was attempting to survive attacks from one of the others. Just as it seemed that Taskmaster had overcome Ghost's onslaught of attacks, the latter phased directly in front of her and shot her target in the head. Taskmaster collapsed to the ground, dead in an instant.
It was an extremely shocking moment. Although the MCU's original portrayal of Taskmaster had divided audiences, there were two reasons why she should have been safe. For one, the character is an important one in the comics (and a fan-favorite at that). And second, this version carried a great deal of importance to the arcs of Yelena and her sister Natasha Romanoff. The latter wanted to save Taskmaster, real name Antonia Dreykov, in Black Widow, so it was pretty surprising how things went down in Thunderbolts*. To see her cast away in a few seconds, having only said a few words to Yelena in their unlikely reunion was a surprise. So, why did it go down like that? Director Jake Schreier has the answers.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, he reveals that the delays caused by the WGA and SAG strikes influenced a number of changes that took place in the script. With the added time to think about the film, there was one element that they decided could be reworked. It turns out that the original version of the movie didn't feature any deaths, something that Schreier says left the film feeling a little "bloodless". He said:
"... it felt like we needed to take a swing like that so that you didn't really know who was going to make it, and also so that it was clear that it could have been any one of them."
The film definitely pulls that off, regardless of whether you were a fan of the decision or not. Valentina sent those operatives down there to kill one another, and unfortunately one of them succeeded in taking out their target. It's an unfortunate moment, but an effective one that really drives home how ruthless Valentina is and how the stakes truly are life-or-death in Thunderbolts*.
One of the biggest criticisms is how quickly it discards the character and that is an understandable point-of-view - one that Schreier acknowledges, while also adding that to make Taskmaster's death take place any later in the movie would have upended the film's tonal balance as it would have hit that much harder.
"The decision to do it when we did it, we went through a lot of different versions of that, and we thought very carefully about it... And it felt like, while it would've been very nice — and Olga is a wonderful actress — to have her on the team for longer, that death would've kind of reverberated a lot harder and made it harder to find our tonal balance if it had happened later in the film."
Eagle-eyed Marvel fans had predicted Antonia's unfortunate fate pretty early on due to Thunderbolts*' own trailers. The studio attempted to avoid suspicion by digitally-placing Taskmaster into one of the group shots (see above) but her lack of appearances outside of the vault scene throughout subsequent trailers - and Marvel's own use of the real version of that scene in the final trailers - failed to convince fans that the former villain wasn't going to die.
So, there were some who weren't shocked. But for general audiences, Taskmaster's premature death was a shocker. And to many, it was very unnecessary.
Thunderbolts* is now streaming on Disney Plus.