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Florence Pugh says they filmed a fake scene for Thunderbolts in order to keep the reveal a secret during production.
"We shot a version where she was like, 'The New Thunderbolts!'" Pugh told Entertainment Weekly. "And everyone was like, 'Woo!' And then we took all of the background [actors] out and shot Julia's line, which was kind of cool."
In the final moments of the film, an impromptu press conference is held after Yelena (Pugh), Bucky (Sebastian Stan), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Red Guardian (David Harbour), and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) save the world from the Void (Lewis Pullman). Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who assembled the team in the first place, takes the mic and announces the team as not the Thunderbolts, but as the New Avengers. The end credits then reveal The New Avengers as the film's real title, which, of course, explains why the title had that asterisk for so long.
Thunderbolts is the last entry in Marvel Phase 5, which began in 2023 with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Marvel Phase 6 is set to kick off with The Fantastic Four: First Steps in July. The New Avengers are set to appear in Avengers: Doomsday, along with the likes of Anthony Mackie, Letitia Wright, and many, many more.
Thunderbolts does not yet have a streaming release date, but the film is headed to Digital on July 1 and will be out on Blu-ray on July 29. For more, check out our list of all the upcoming Marvel movies and shows you need to know about.
