If you’ve seen Thunderbolts* — or as we know it now, The New Avengers — then you’ll know it doesn’t drop its real title until just before the credits roll. While Marvel fans were expecting a scrappy team of antiheroes doing dirty jobs for a shady boss, what they got was a full-on rebranding of Earth’s Mightiest Misfits. But that twist wasn’t the only surprise. According to screenwriter Eric Pearson, the final cut of Thunderbolts* could’ve looked very different — and it nearly included some major Marvel characters from across the MCU.

While Thunderbolts* features Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) teaming up before ultimately becoming the New Avengers alongside Red Guardian (David Harbour), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), and Sentry (Lewis Pullman), earlier drafts had some seriously wild additions. “There was a point where I wanted Red Hulk to be the villain,” Pearson told ComicBook, referring to Harrison Ford’s President Thaddeus Ross and his monstrous alter ego. “And [Marvel Studios] said, ‘No.’ I was annoyed, and now I’m happy. The Sentry is the perfect person.”

The Red Hulk was ultimately saved for Captain America: Brave New World, which hit theaters just a few months before Thunderbolts*. But that wasn’t the only character cut from the team sheet. Pearson confirmed that Laurence Fishburne’s Bill Foster, Ava Starr’s adoptive father from Ant-Man and the Wasp, nearly suited up as Goliath. Pearson envisioned Foster forming a parallel dynamic with Alexei and Yelena — two not-quite-father figures with very different parenting styles. He said:

“There was a draft or two where Bucky was not involved, and there was a draft or two where Bill Foster was involved. He comes in with [a role] bigger than a cameo and has a Goliath kind of moment and joins the team towards the end”.

He went on to say, “There was something with two old guys, [Foster] and [Alexei], who are not exactly fathers, but acting as fathers.” But he ultimately removed Foster because the character lacked the same trauma-based motivation that defined the rest of the team.

Why Isn’t Zemo in ‘Thunderbolts*’?

It wouldn’t be a Thunderbolts* discussion without Baron Zemo (Daniel Brühl). After all, he did form the original team in the comics by masquerading as a hero with the Masters of Evil. Director Jake Schreier was all in. Pearson explains that the character, featured in Captain America: Civil War and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, just didn’t fit into this story.

“Jake was very excited about doing Man-Thing. The other one was Zemo. ‘Let’s get Zemo in there. But Marvel never shut the idea down outright — it just didn’t fit the story they were telling. It wasn’t, ‘No, let’s deny the audience these people. It was more like, ‘Let’s find a way that doesn’t break the story.’”

Instead, the script centered on what Pearson called “disposable delinquents” — people who were manipulated into a kill squad only to become something more. Zemo, iconic as he is, didn’t quite fit that vision. Sounds like some kind of… suicide squad. Nah, we’ve all heard the jokes. Pearson knew comparisons to that team would be inevitable, and actively tried to avoid that trap. He said:

“What was very important to me is I found a story that wasn’t just a rehash. Not because it’s a bad story, but it’s just because it is a story audiences are familiar with. They sit in there and say, ‘Oh, I know the moves of this story.’”

Thunderbolts* aka The New Avengers is in theaters now

via Collider