‘Thunderbolts*’—A Spark of Hope in Dark Times
After years of mediocrity, Thunderbolts* is the welcome change MCU fans were waiting for.

Violet Elizabeth McGraw (born April 22, 2011) is an American actress. Her acting debut was a recurring role in the 2016 television series Love as Nina, and her first feature film was 2018's Ready Player One. In 2019 she was nominated for an OFTA Television Award for Best Ensemble in a Motion Picture or Limited Series for The Haunting of Hill House. She is also known for her roles as a young Yelena Belova in the Marvel Studios superhero films Black Widow (2021) and Thunderbolts* (2025), and as Cady in the horror films M3GAN (2022) and M3GAN 2.0 (2025). Description above from the Wikipedia article Violet McGraw, licensed under CC-BY-SA, is a full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
After years of mediocrity, Thunderbolts* is the welcome change MCU fans were waiting for.
During the third act, the momentum stalls, largely due to the film’s obsession with Kubrick’s visual design. But all in all, Doctor Sleep is a cinematic success, defined by rich characters and high powered emotion.
"Black Widow" has strong female characters but sidelines its title character and serves as a launchpad for her successor, Florence Pugh's Yelena.