WARNING: This contains SPOILERS for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
The MCU is bringing Marvel’s Thunderbolts to the big screen with Thunderbolts, and the film can set the stage for an even worse Avengers replacement team. While Marvel Comics’ Thunderbolts team is known for combining Marvel villains in what can easily be compared to DC’s Suicide Squad, the MCU’s Thunderbolts seems to be going for a more anti-hero approach. Still, just the fact that the MCU will follow a group of characters whose moral com can be tricky suggests that the franchise is open to adapting other questionable Marvel forces such as Orborn's Dark Avengers in the future, especially now that the Avengers are taking the backseat.
Unlike the Infinity Saga, which saw four Avengers movies, Avengers: Secret Wars. That said, Marvel is not giving up on team-up movies as Thunderbolts will see Yelena, Bucky Barnes, Ghost, Red Guardian, Taskmaster, and John Walker working together under Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Contessa Valentina. Despite the much less “villainous” roster compared to the comics, the MCU’s Thunderbolts team can change the universe’s balance of power and allow something like the Dark Avengers, whose existence is tied with the Thunderbolts, to be formed after Phase 6.
Marvel’s Dark Avengers Comic Book History Explained
In the comics, after helping save the world from the Skrulls in Secret Invasion, Norman Osborn became the most influential person in the Marvel universe. Both SHIELD and the Thunderbolts were now under the orders of Osborn, who later dissolved SHIELD and made the Thunderbolts into his private elite force. Using his influence and money, Norman Osborn was able to launch a private Avengers team sanctioned by the government. The idea of an official super team working for the government had been relatively successful with the Mighty Avengers and the Thunderbolts, the latter of which was a direct inspiration for Norman’s Dark Avengers.
How Thunderbolts Can Set Up The MCU’s Dark Avengers
While adapting the Dark Avengers without Norman Osborn would be a difficult task, the MCU has enough tools to create its own version of the Dark Avengers building up from Thunderbolts. Though the Sokovia Accords have essentially failed, Secret Invasion and Thunderbolts happening relatively close in the MCU, an MCU version of the Dark Avengers would be only natural despite the absence of Norman Osborn.
That said, incorporating the Dark Avengers already during the Multiverse Saga would probably not work. Thunderbolts happening after Secret Invasion is already a major change from the Marvel Comics’ timeline, meaning that the Dark Avengers cannot be formed in the MCU the same way as they were in the comics. Still, after maybe a couple of Thunderbolts movies, Marvel could have a Norman Osborn-like force, perhaps even Daredevil: Born Again’s Wilson Fisk, putting together a new team. Unlike the Thunderbolts, the Dark Avengers would not be a secret team but rather the “poster heroes” for either the government or other organizations.
