Marvel's upcoming Thunderbolts* has a brand new "Big Game" trailer, first aired during this year's Superbowl – and once again it turns the spotlight on the mysterious "Bob" as played by Lewis Pullman in the new movie...
So... Who exactly is Bob? Those who have been following the development of the film know that "Bob" is very likely to be Robert Reynolds, the real name of the embattled superhero known as The Sentry.
It's fitting that there's a bit of a mystery around the character, as The Sentry has a strange, gimmicky real world history in which Marvel Comics billed the hero as a character co-created – and later literally forgotten – by the man himself, Stan Lee.
The story goes that way back in the '60s, Lee and a relatively unknown artist named Artie Rosen created a Superman-like hero of near limitless power named The Sentry – though Lee and Rosen lost track of the character before ever using the idea. After Rosen's death in 1999, contemporary writer Paul Jenkins uncovered Rosen's original sketches and brought them to Lee, thus a long lost original Marvel Comics character that had gone unseen since the early '60s was rediscovered, birthing the legend of the Sentry, the character that Stan Lee – and the entire Marvel Universe – forgot.
Except that's all bull$#!%.
In actuality, The Sentry was a brand new character conceived by Paul Jenkins, Rick Veitch, and Jae Lee, who was intended as a character who was once a part of the Marvel Universe, but who everyone from the Avengers, to the X-Men, and beyond totally forgot about.
But rather than simply selling the conceit that all the characters in the Marvel Universe had forgotten about the Sentry, Marvel pulled out all the stops, enlisting Stan Lee himself, then Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, and even the most popular comic news publication of the time, Wizard Magazine, to sell the story that Lee had actually forgotten about the Sentry in real life as well.
This involved a series of interviews in Wizard in which Lee, Jenkins, and Quesada discussed how the Sentry was rediscovered, along with their plans to bring him "back" into the Marvel Universe with a story that would reveal how he had disappeared in the first place. The team also brought in classic Marvel artist John Romita Sr. to create the sketches that were meant to have been drawn by the entirely fictional artist Artie Rosen, who was invented as part of the story of the forgotten creation of the Sentry.
Nonetheless, while fans had mixed reactions (and levels of awareness) about the so-called Sentry hoax, the character became a very real, and often controversial part of the Marvel Universe.
So who is the Sentry, really? And what does his comic history say about what may be coming in Thunderbolts*?
Who is the Sentry?
In Marvel Universe terms, he's Robert Reynolds, a young man who gains the incredible "power of a thousand exploding suns" after ingesting an experimental serum, which basically amounts to near limitless, Superman-like power.
However, there's a dark side to the Sentry's powers. Lurking inside Reynolds is a being known as The Void, an evil reflection of the Sentry whose powers of destruction are just as immense as Reynolds' own abilities, and who manifests when Reynolds' mental illness goes unchecked.
The original '00s Sentry limited series establishes that the Sentry was actually a Silver Age contemporary of heroes like the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. He disappeared from the Marvel Universe when his mind was wiped, along with the memories of everyone on Earth so that everyone would forget the Sentry had ever existed (kind of like how in the MCU Doctor Strange made everyone forget who Peter Parker is in Spider-Man: No Way Home). This, it seems, was the only way to subdue the Void.
Once Sentry is reawakened in the Marvel Universe, he becomes a recurring fixture of the Avengers franchise, first as a surprise member of the New Avengers team, and eventually as a member of Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers.
Under Osborn's manipulation, Sentry is warped into something of Osborn's personal enforcer, in touch with his destructive Void persona and willing to carry out his most destructive ends.
This culminates in the story Siege, in which Osborn and the Dark Avengers, assisted by Loki, launch an attack on Asgard, which was then floating above the Earth. Though Loki believes Osborn intends to install him as Asgard's new ruler, instead Osborn activates the Sentry to use his incredible strength to destroy Asgard, bringing it to the ground in ruins.
Ares, the Greek god of war who was part of the Dark Avengers, attacks Sentry, but is completely ripped in half, showcasing Sentry's incredible strength. Sentry then also kills Loki himself, leading to Loki's eventual rebirth as Kid Loki.
(Not for nothing, 'The Void' was the name given to the place where Kid Loki and the other Loki Variants were trapped in the MCU Loki streaming series, which recently played a big role in Deadpool and Wolverine).
After Sentry/Void is defeated at the end of Siege, he's locked away again, though he's since resurfaced a time or two in the Marvel Universe, both as a hero and as a villain.
The Sentry in the MCU
It certainly looks like the rumors are true, and Lewis Pullman's mystery Thunderbolts* character will indeed be The Sentry, unless Marvel Studios has a really big bait-and-switch in mind (which isn't entirely impossible).
This would fulfill long standing rumors dating back to an early casting notice for an "evil Superman type," which eventually seemingly landed on actor Steven Yuen, who then had to back out of the film due to production delays. If Pullman is indeed playing the Sentry, this leads to the next logical question – what about his dark side, The Void?
As we noted before, The Void is the name of a major plot element of the Loki streaming series and more recently in Deadpool and Wolverine. But it's not a being (that we know of), it's a place where the detritus of pruned timelines goes to be eaten out of existence by the monstrous Alioth.
Could the movie Sentry have a connection to The Void as it appears in the MCU? Would Thunderbolts* use the term "The Void" in a totally different way? Or will there be some other twist in how The Sentry is brought into the MCU?
If The Sentry does become a villain, whether it's as The Void or as some other concept, that would bring another menace capable of challenging the entire Avengers into the MCU. Certainly the caped figure we see floating over the city and causing carnage on the streets below in the new trailer fits that early "evil Superman" description.
We're sure to find out more as we draw ever closer to the film's May 2 release, but for now, Thunderbolts* is still keeping its share of secrets.
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