From posters to social media posts, Marvel Studios wasted no time in spoiling the meaning of the asterisk found in the title for their new movie, “Thunderbolts*.”
At the close of its opening weekend, Marvel gave the “Thunderbolts*” billboard a new look with the title torn away to reveal the unconventional group’s new name “*The New Avengers,” according to X.
Here is more about how the name was revealed, and what the post-credit scene teased for the team’s future.
The name reveal
According to Variety, at the end of the film, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) was the one to announce the team’s name as the New Avengers.
The group includes Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Red Guardian (David Harbour), John Walker (Wyatt Russell) Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and Sentry (Lewis Pullman) to round it out, per Variety.
Marvel Studios also shared a video on X of Pugh ripping off the original title to reveal the new title with the rest of the cast. The video was taken when they were backstage at the Hollywood premiere, according to Marvel’s official website.
The entertainment company continued to highlight the reveal with an updated post on X showing “*The New Avengers” name revealed in response to a similar post with the original name.
Stan also went around updating his own characters posters for the movie, according to a video shared by Marvel Studios on Instagram.
Before the film’s release, Deseret News reported that fans had already suspected that the asterisk was hinting at a name change for the group and “New Avengers” was one of the names that was predicted.
But while the name for the group of antiheroes has changed, Deadline reported that the studio didn’t technically re-title “Thunderbolts*,” they simply spelled out the asterisk.
The post-credit scene
With the group’s new name being announced in the final scene of the film, the post-credit scene helps give more insight as to what is coming for the newly assembled team.
Variety shared that in the scene the New Avengers are caught in a legal battle about “copyright infringement of the Avengers logo” with Captain America (Anthony Mackie) while they are living at the previous Avengers’ headquarters — now named the Watchtower.
The Fantastic Four is also teased in the scene with their theme music being heard as their spaceship enters Earth’s orbit from another dimension, per Variety.
“Thunderbolts*” director, Jake Schreier, told Variety that the post-credit scene was not directed by him.
“That’s the Russos on the set of ‘Avengers: Doomsday,’” Schreier said. “I got to be there, which was very fun, to watch your buddies go on to this grander scale.”
He continued: “We all worked on the scene just to make sure that it was honest to where our characters were. But also, you’re giving them over to this whole new world and new scope, and you want them to function in that way. It was fun to see them directed in another context and on a different level of scope than we had been treating it.”
Deadline confirmed that the New Avengers will return next summer in “Avengers: Doomsday.”