Spoilers for Thunderbolts* follow down below.
Summary
Thunderbolts*shocked the audience by killing one of the supposed main characters right off the bat. Director Jake Schreier explained why they had to get rid them.
Antonia Dreykov, aka Taskmaster, is portrayed by Olga Kurylenko in theMarvel Cinematic Universe(MCU). She made her debut in the MCU inBlack Widow(2021). Taskmaster is the daughter of General Dreykov, the mastermind behind the Red Room, which brainwashed young females and trained them to be assassins, including Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson). She was presumed dead after Natasha killed Dreykov by bombing his office. However, she survived and was turned into a weapon via tech implants. SinceThunderbolts*feature a group of reformed villains, many thought she would survive, but to their surprise, she had the shortest screen time among the lead stars.
TheThunderbolts*director recently sat down for an interview withThe New York Times. He was asked why Taskmaster was heavily featured in the promotional materials when she only had one scene and was killed nearly immediately. Some trailers even suggested she would be part ofthe new Avengers teamat the end. The filmmaker acknowledged how they used Taskmaster in marketing the film and admitted that killing off the character wasn’t an easy decision. “That was a tough one because it’s a character that matters to a lot of people and we don’t want to take that lightly,” he explained. He added that the idea of getting rid of Taskmaster came after the strike when they realized the film was “a little bloodless.” However, since they wanted to share a story about “people who killed people for a living” and it had to be translated on the big screen, they decided to kill one of the significant characters. Schreier said they could introduce a new character and kill it, but “it wouldn’t have the resonance or potentially the shock of doing it to Taskmaster.”
Killing Off Taskmaster At The Start Of The Film GaveThunderbolts*Stakes It Wouldn’t Have Otherwise
He added that approaching Kurylenko about her character’s death in the film wasn’t easy for them to do as well. It was reportedly a “hard conversation,” but theParadox Effectstar was reportedly supportive of their plan, so they were very thankful to her for still joining the project despite being given little screen time. In another interview withEntertainment Weekly, Schreier shared that theyconsidered different ways of killing Taskmasterbefore deciding to give her an instant death. While they wanted to continue working with Kurylenko, extending her screen time would reportedly only make it difficult for them to find the “tonal balance” of her demise. He acknowledged that how they killed Taskmaster was “a little cold-blooded.”
Taskmaster’s death was a shock to many, but there were already rumors that she might not survive in the film. While she was heavily present in posters, when the trailer was released, eagle-eyed fans immediately noticed her minimal presence. The character was established inBlack Widow,and sinceThunderbolts*is a group of misfits and villains,she qualifies for the group. Killing her caused many fans to feel that she had wasted potential, but a shocking death is a shocking death all the same.
