Wyatt Russell says there really was a version of Thunderbolts where the whole team died.
The comment comes out of MegaCon Orlando, where attendees on X posted that Russell said all of the Thunderbolts were originally supposed to die.
The quote quickly made the rounds online over the weekend. That lines up with what had already been reported back in February 2024, when The Hollywood Reporter said earlier drafts of the movie centered on a mission “that was supposed to end with their deaths.”
This is not coming out of nowhere
Back in 2024, THR reported Marvel had brought in Joanna Calo to work on the script and added that a source familiar with previous drafts said the movie was originally built around villains and antiheroes heading into a mission that would have ended with the deaths of the team.
Russell’s MegaCon comment now makes it sound like that idea was real and made it pretty far into development before Marvel changed course.
That also helps explain why the old rumor never fully went away. At the time, it sounded extreme, but Russell now appears to have confirmed that Marvel had at least one version of Thunderbolts where the ending was far darker than what fans got.
Why Marvel likely changed it
Marvel obviously did not go through with wiping out the team, and that decision makes even more sense now.
The studio has already confirmed that cast members from Thunderbolts are part of Avengers: Doomsday, with Wyatt Russell, Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Lewis Pullman, David Harbour, Hannah John-Kamen, and others named in Marvel’s official cast rollout.
So if an early draft really killed everyone off, that ending was never going to survive once Marvel decided the Thunderbolts would feed directly into the next Avengers movie.
Russell’s comment makes the rewrite sound less like fan theory and more like one of those major Marvel pivots that happened behind the scenes before release.
Another look at Marvel’s rewrites
It also adds one more example to the long list of Marvel projects that got reshaped during development.
Thunderbolts was already known to have gone through script work, and Russell’s comment suggests the biggest change may have been the ending itself.
For fans, it is the kind of behind-the-scenes reveal that makes you wonder how different Thunderbolts might have looked if Marvel had stuck with that original plan.
Killing the entire team would have made it one of the bleakest endings in MCU history. Instead, Marvel kept those characters alive and turned them into part of the path forward.
Release info
Thunderbolts is now streaming on Disney+. The film stars Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes, Wyatt Russell as John Walker, David Harbour as Red Guardian, Hannah John-Kamen as Ghost, Olga Kurylenko as Taskmaster, and Lewis Pullman as Bob. Avengers: Doomsday is the next major stop for multiple members of the team.
