How ‘Thunderbolts*’ Writer Eric Pearson Assembled the ‘Breakfast Club’ of the MCU

Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts* assembles an oddball group of characters from across the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Directed by Jake Schreier, the film follows familiar faces Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen), Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour), and John Walker (Wyatt Russell) as they find themselves tangled in a dangerous conspiracy, puppeteered by scheming CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Joined by mystery man Bob (Lewis Pullman), these eccentric mercenaries have to learn to work together, eventually uniting to form a (somewhat) cohesive team.

That team is the brainchild of writer Eric Pearson, who co-wrote the Thunderbolts* screenplay with Joanna Calo. Pearson has a long history at Marvel Studios, contributing to projects like Thor: Ragnarok, Black Widow, and the upcoming film The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and it was Pearson who first pitched the idea for Thunderbolts*, uniting a ragtag band of antiheroes from different corners of the MCU.

With Thunderbolts* in theaters now, Pearson opened up about bringing this unlikely squad to the screen — and how the team almost faced off against a very different villain. (Spoilers ahead!)

MARVEL.COM: You worked on Black Widow, which first introduced Yelena Belova to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. What excited you about getting to explore her next chapter?

ERIC PEARSON: Literally everything excites you about working with Florence Pugh. [Laughs] It’s like knowing that you’re going into battle with the biggest gun in the world. She was such a wonderful supporting role in Black Widow, and what she and Scarlett [Johansson] did is the heart of that movie. But we had this confidence of taking [Yelena] into a lead. We knew that both Yelena the character and Florence playing her would have such strong shoulders to carry this whole thing. Having that center access point affords you such freedom, and it’s such a comfort as a writer.

MARVEL.COM: One of the fun things about this movie is how you get to connect all these different characters from different parts of the MCU. How did you assemble this unconventional team?

ERIC PEARSON: I knew I wanted Yelena to be the de facto leader of this team. What’s funny is that the Marvel universe now is so big that there are all these characters. So it’s like, “Hey, you know what? We haven’t heard from Ava in a long time.” The world’s big enough that it leaves some people behind. John Walker, I feel, was someone who was despised. Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers was the most beloved, and John Walker comes in and screws it all up. Everyone hates him, and no one’s asking for more of him.

I wanted a lot of people who no one’s asking for more of. I wanted to know what those people are up to! Especially once we found the idea of the Sentry and the Void, all of them are kind of at the edge of this void. I loved the idea of taking the people that nobody expects anything from and doing something great.

MARVEL.COM: Were there any characters you considered but ultimately didn’t include?

ERIC PEARSON: Bill Foster was involved. He had a Goliath moment with Ava. There were at least one or two drafts where had a supporting role as part of Ava’s story. But that’s the only other character that was thought of.

MARVEL.COM: It’s got to be fun to get to play in all the different corners of the MCU, uniting all these unlikely characters.

ERIC PEARSON: The other big touchstone that I was always bringing up was The Breakfast Club. The thing that’s so great about The Breakfast Club is they’re all so different. They come from different places. They all talk about how they’re so horrible, but they realize they’re all the same, and they love each other. So, it was about finding the right people. Except for I’d say Yelena and Alexei, they all come from far off places. They don’t have any reason to know each other. They all think the others are the worst, but [they realize], “Nope, we’re all the same. We have the same problems, and together, we could really be a support group for one another.”

MARVEL.COM: You mentioned bringing in Sentry and the Void, played by Lewis Pullman. As a writer, how do you approach a complicated character like that, especially when his powers are so expansive in the comics?

ERIC PEARSON: It was from a disappointingly practical advantage point at first. The original idea was that John Walker was going to turn into a Red Hulk or an A-Bomb or some sort of big monster. The idea was that Valentina, through her ongoing manipulation of all these people, had convinced him that his Super Soldier stuff was wearing off and making him sick. So, she was constantly juicing him. But what had really happened is that he had a time bomb in him that she could set off whenever she needed to.

My goal from the start of this was that I wanted them all sent to a place to kill each other. The second goal was to end this fight with a hug, not someone being beaten into submission. Logistically, we needed a big villain who they can’t defeat physically but can cause a lot of destruction. It was going to almost be like “sun’s getting real low” moment for the John Walker/A-Bomb idea that never felt totally right.

So, we needed a new antagonist. This was maybe one or two drafts in. From my time at the Marvel writers’ program, I remembered Sentry, so I went back and reread some stuff. In the comics, he feels very much like pure good versus pure evil. But I was like, what if he’s heroic ambition and self-esteem versus self-loathing, loneliness, and depression? Well, then he’s all of our characters’ arcs wrapped up into one person.

MARVEL.COM: He really is a representation of everyone on the team.

ERIC PEARSON: Plus [we thought], let’s have some fun with the memory loss. The scripts always had them down in this vault, but what if there’s some guy there? What if there’s just some dude? He almost becomes a mascot for Yelena. She’s like, “I’ve got to protect the guinea pig, and I’ve got to protect this guy.” He’s a little bit of a galvanizing force, helping to bring them together.

MARVEL.COM: I also love the relationship between Yelena and Alexei. What was fun for you about getting to revisit that father-daughter dynamic after Black Widow?

ERIC PEARSON: It was everything. The thing about those two [actors] is that you can slide from comedy to real drama, and they can say so little and mean a lot. One of my favorite bits is about her being the goalie on the Thunderbolts team, how she wanted to be the one who everybody relied on when they made a mistake. There’s Florence in tears, and you can still slip a small joke in: “Do you remember why you wanted to be the goalie?” “Yeah, so I didn’t have to run.”

Something big that Florence wanted was that father-daughter launch. She wanted to have that moment where without speaking, they just know they’re going to do this thing. I thought that was so smart of her to put a physical action to represent their relationship.

MARVEL.COM: You’ve worked on so many different Marvel projects. What felt different about making Thunderbolts*?

ERIC PEARSON: Sometimes you get surprised by your own story. Sometimes you get surprised when the characters go in a way that you don’t expect. And sometimes you get surprised when Kevin [Feige] listens to the pitch and says, “Okay, but at the end, she doesn’t call them the Thunderbolts. She calls them the New Avengers.” And you’re like, “Okay, if you say so!” [Laughs] We talked for an hour about whether the “new” is capitalized at the end. Is it Avengers who are new, or are they the New Avengers?

For me, the big thing was that it was an idea that I brought to life, so it was very special. The other ones that I’ve written on the most were Thor: Ragnarok and Black Widow. Coming into Thor: Ragnarok was so fun, but there were some things that we already knew. We knew we were going to have a Hulk fight in the middle. We knew we were going to break the hammer. There were things that I knew were going to happen. With this, there was nothing. So for me, it felt extra special.

Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts* is in theaters now.