The first teaser trailer for Marvel’s Thunderbolts has leaked online, and it appears to answer a lingering question that’s bothered MCU fans for years.
No, this has nothing to do with Tiamut, the dead Celestial who somehow didn’t cause country-flooding tsunamis with its ginormous corpse collapsing in the ocean (Captain America: Brave New World will address that).
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has a few plot holes and things that have mysteriously (and frustratingly) been ignored; what happened to all those people in Missouri in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, why did Odin have a fake Infinity Gauntlet, and how could Red Guardian have fought Captain America in the ’80s when he was still frozen?
However, one big question has fueled lots of speculation: who bought Avengers Tower from Tony Stark? Was it the Fantastic Four (presumably after 1960s-set events of the upcoming movie), or could it be Kingpin or even Mephisto?
Well, going by a brief glimpse of a familiar skyline in the leaked Thunderbolts trailer, it seems we have an answer: Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).
So Val bought Avengers Tower and they’re doing Dark Avengers huh https://t.co/Ycok7qMlAz
— Sam (@_SLH5_) July 28, 2024
The trailer (which was shown at San Diego Comic-Con, but still hasn’t been officially released) ends with the new team – Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Red Guardian (David Harbour), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), US Agent (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) standing in a huge room in a skyscraper with Val.
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“So Val bought Avengers Tower. The asterisk in the title definitely means they gonna go from Thunderbolts* to Dark Avengers,” one user predicted.
A scene in the ‘Thunderbolts’ trailer shown at SDCC featured Val and the Avengers tower, confirming she’s the one who purchased it. pic.twitter.com/eUvclHkUpt
— The MCU Den (@mcu_den) August 1, 2024
“So Val bought Avengers Tower and they’re putting a huge emphasis on the asterisk in the Thunderbolts title… the logical conclusion is that at the end, the Thunderbolts team is introduced to the public at Avengers Tower as the New Avengers (aka the Dark Avengers controlled by CIA),” another user wrote.
“Yeah, Val and the OXE are running the Avengers Tower which is actually gonna become the OXE,” a third wrote.
In the comics, Val is the chairman of OXE, the “largest holding company in the world.” It’s affiliated with the Outer Circle, a clandestine group that seeks to control world events and governments; Avengers Tower seems like an understandably desirable HQ.
Before Thunderbolts hits cinemas on May 2, 2025, check out our breakdown of every upcoming MCU movie and our ranking of the best superhero movies.