(This story contains spoilers for Thunderbolts*.)

Thunderbolts* co-writer Eric Pearson has been one of Marvel Studios’ most reliable collaborators the last 15 years.

In 2010, the New York City native enrolled in Marvel Studios’ Writers Program, before cutting his teeth on the majority of the Marvel One-Shots series, including Agent Carter (2013), which served as the catalyst for the 2015-16 ABC television series that housed three Pearson-penned episodes. He then performed uncredited writing on Ant-Man (2017) and Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), paving the way for Thor: Ragnarok (2017), his first co-writing credit on an MCU feature film. He proceeded to do some more script-doctoring on Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019) until Black Widow (2021) earned him sole writing credit. In between his Marvel work, Pearson also co-wrote Godzilla vs. Kong and Transformers One.

Coming out of Black Widow, Pearson laid the groundwork for Thunderbolts*, initiating the pitch that teamed up Widow’s Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian (David Harbour) and Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) with a few other MCU misfits against CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Eventually, he installed the multi-faceted villain of Sentry (Lewis Pullman), establishing the foundation of the now-critically acclaimed film’s much-discussed mental health allegory.

Pearson, in time, handed script responsibilities off to director Jake Schreier’s Beef collaborators, Lee Sung Jin and Joanna Calo, as he was called into co-writing duty on Matt Shakman’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Thus, when the dust settled, he was only caught off guard by one particular change involving Ava Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and her headshot execution of Taskmaster. (In Black Widow, the child version of the character narrowly survived Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton’s attempt to assassinate her father, General Dreykov, and he subsequently turned his gravely injured daughter into a programmable killing machine until Natasha freed her eight years later.)

“When I saw the first cut, the biggest change was Taskmaster taking that shot, and I was shocked,” Pearson tells The Hollywood Reporter. “In my drafts, Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster lived out the movie, and she had a bit of a subplot with Ava/Ghost. They’d both been raised in labs, and Ava big-sistered her into how to break free and be her own person.” 

Thunderbolts*’s unlikely union of MCU loners and rejects received the titular nickname when Alexei misinterprets John Walker’s (Wyatt Russell) sarcastic reference to Yelena’s youth soccer team. However, the name wouldn’t last long, as Valentina, in a final act of self-preservation, introduces the team as the “New Avengers,” revealing that the asterisk in the title was always meant to signify a placeholder name for something bigger and better. (As originally planned, the marketing for the film has now officially rebranded itself as The New Avengers.)

“That was a Kevin (Feige) thing. I pitched that Valentina is forced to introduce the Thunderbolts, and Kevin said, ‘I think that she should call them the Avengers.’ And I was like, ‘Whoa, okay!’” Pearson recalls. “And then there were many, many discussions: ‘Capital N? Lowercase n? Are they Avengers that are new? Are they the New Avengers?’ But that was Kevin’s idea, and it’s part of some four-dimensional chess plan that I don’t totally know yet.”

At one point during development, Yelena was going to further resolve a Clint Barton-related subplot that was set up in Black Widow’s post-credit scene and carried out in the Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld-led Disney+ series, Hawkeye. In the preceding stinger, Valentina tasked Yelena with a mission to do away with Clint, citing him as “the man responsible” for Natasha’s (Scarlett Johansson) death. But Clint later set the record straight so that Yelena understood that her adoptive sister sacrificed herself for the sake of bringing half the population back from Thanos’ blip, including Yelena.

“I loved (the confrontation scene) because it emphasized Valentina’s manipulation. Yelena entered the scene on fire, furious, accusing Valentina of setting her up to take out her sister’s killer, when, in reality, he was her best friend,” Pearson shares. “Then Valentina completely flipped the script on Yelena. I believe the line was: ‘Set you up? You mean paid you to do a job that, by the way, you didn’t even do? So I heard some bad gossip, pardon me for trying to motivate you. But this is your job, and asking questions isn’t a part of it.’”

Pearson is also revealing that, prior to Sentry’s involvement, John Walker was once the centerpiece of Valentina’s nefarious scheme.

“There were a lot of versions where Valentina had planted this kind of timebomb inside John Walker, and the goal was to make him the most unlikeable person on the team,” Pearson says. “He then becomes the monster, and (the Thunderbolts) have to talk him down. It didn’t ever totally work.”

Below, during a recent spoiler conversation with THR, Pearson also discusses the absence of Rachel Weisz’s Melina, as well as his ominous one-word tease of The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

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Thunderbolts* is your eight or ninth official Marvel credit. Do you currently have a deal with Disney or Marvel? Or do they have you on speed dial? 

I’m more on speed dial right now. I’m supposed to go in and talk to them. It’s not about anything specific, but I think they’re doing the early furniture arranging of what’s next after Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. So I’m supposed to have a meeting to window-shop, I suppose, or to see if anything fits or is exciting. But I’m floating around on my own right now.

Assuming that Thunderbolts* was always a Yelena-centered ensemble, you’re obviously the natural choice to kick-start it since you wrote Black Widow. Was that Marvel’s thinking as well?

That was actually my thinking. Marvel didn’t really have a plan for a Thunderbolts movie. I brought it to them, but I was thinking that, having had the pleasure to meet Florence on Black Widow and write the first Yelena Belova stuff and work with her to build that character, with her doing quite a bit of heavy lifting there. She’s incredible, and I knew that she was someone who could carry a movie like this. I didn’t want to go in saying, “Let’s hide a Yelena movie in a team-up movie.” I wanted it to be a team. 

The Avengers had the centerpiece of Tony Stark and Captain America, and the duality of those guys at the lead. For the Thunderbolts and the way that I wanted to view these team members and the themes of the movie, it felt like Yelena was a natural leader. I’m not sure if this comparison is fully baked, but the idea is that she’s Michael Corleone and Bucky is Tom Hagen. That’s the way that I see it. 

Was this story always meant to smuggle the “New Avengers” into the mix?

That was a Kevin (Feige) thing. I told him I wanted to do a Thunderbolts movie and the way in was going to be through Yelena bringing them together against Valentina. I tried one pitch that didn’t work, and the second pitch was very, very close to the movie that we have now. I ended the pitch with Yelena whispering in Valentina’s ear, “You work for us now,” essentially. So I pitched that Valentina is forced to introduce the Thunderbolts, and Kevin said, “I think that she should call them the Avengers.” And I was like, “Whoa, okay!” 

That was his one big note from the pitch, and when you get one note from a Marvel pitch, you get out of there. So I was like, “Okay, cool. I don’t know what your plan is for the New Avengers.” And then there were many, many discussions: “Capital N? Lowercase n? Are they Avengers that are new? Are they the New Avengers?” But that was Kevin’s idea, and it’s part of some four-dimensional chess plan that I don’t totally know yet.

When the Thunderbolts are trapped in Oxe’s vault, they put their heads together to find a way out, and the solution was to put their butts together in order to climb up the silo. And the shape of their bodies is actually an asterisk. Did you notice that? 

(Laughs.) As soon as you said “the shape of their bodies,” I was like, “Oh my God, it’s an asterisk!” I had not thought about that before, but it’s brilliant. The asterisk came later as well. In my drafts of the script, there was always the peewee Thunderbolts (soccer) team; that was where the name came from. We were obviously not doing Thunderbolt Ross (as inspiration from the Thunderbolts Red run). But the asterisk was a thing that I saw later when they were in production, and I was just like, “That’s really cheeky, and I like it.”

Was there a soccer team photo in Black Widow’s photo album or the Ohio house where Yelena and Natasha grew up with Alexei and Melina? 

I would love to go back and see, but I don’t think so. (Writer’s Note: After my own review, there was no soccer team photo in Black Widow.) It was probably two drafts into (Thunderbolts*) when we got the idea of Alexei calling out Yelena’s youth soccer league and having it be this great moment of both pride, connection and embarrassment for her.

Despite the deleted kiss at the end of Black Widow, there’s still an implication that Alexei (David Harbour) and Melina (Rachel Weisz) have rekindled their romance that began as an arranged marriage for their undercover operation in Ohio. However, she’s absent in Thunderbolts*, and David Harbour indicated to me that he’s been making the case for more of her/Rachel behind the scenes. Was she excluded because a happy Alexei-Melina would undercut the film’s selling point involving a band of loners and rejects?

It was kind of what you’re saying. Alexei is in a similar emotional crater as Yelena. He just masks it much better with a lot more facade and bravado. Happiness was the enemy of the beginning of this movie. You didn’t want these characters to feel like they had anywhere to go that was emotionally stable or safe or supportive. You wanted all of them right there at the edge of the void. Also, I felt like the connection was so strong between Alexei and Yelena (in Black Widow), and I always found that the (other) hard love connection was Melina and Natasha. There’s that inspiring moment of Melina just being impressed by Natasha. So Alexei and Yelena were the peanut butter and chocolate for me; they just go so well together.

Taskmaster’s already tragic life ended in quite a startling way. I can’t think of too many characters in the MCU, if any, who were executed like that via headshot. 

That is the one biggest change. I didn’t get to go to set and finish out this one. I was actually back in Burbank working on Fantastic Four at that point. When I saw the first cut, the biggest change was Taskmaster taking that shot, and I was shocked. In my drafts, Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster lived out the movie, and she had a bit of a subplot with Ava/Ghost. They’d both been raised in labs, and Ava big-sistered her into how to break free and be her own person. 

But I understand why they did it. It was probably just because of my audience reaction of being genuinely surprised. But everything else was exactly where I expected it to be, and Jake said, “We wanted to surprise the audience and raise the stakes and say, ‘Yeah, there’s danger here. No one’s safe.’ There’s a lot of saying that they’re bad people and seeing that they’re good people, so let’s make sure that we know that they’ve done bad things and have been living their lives doing harsh heartless things.”

Who knows how intentional it was, but there’s a cool moment where a window curtain strangles Bob (Lewis Pullman) and Yelena à la Natasha and Yelena’s fight in Black Widow.

Again, I wasn’t on set, but it seems so specific that I can’t imagine it not being (intentional). If it’s not, it’s a hell of a coincidence. That was one of the most fun fights to think of (for Black Widow), and while I can’t say I designed it, I threw ideas into it. We didn’t want to end it in a draw, as in they decide they’re both the best. But whoever passes out first is going to be the first one to die, so let’s have them call a truce. So finding that moment in the fight was so great, and I hope that (the Thunderbolts* moment) was a cool little homage.

Were there any other Black Widow ties that didn’t ultimately make the final film?

No, not that I can think of. As much as we love that and where they came from, we didn’t want there to be too much looking in the past. We had to address the forever loss of Natasha and that effect on Yelena and Alexei. But we really wanted to push forward because Yelena is taking a big leadership role moving forward with this, and it’s a big journey for her. She is naturally anti-establishment, and if you look too much into the past, she couldn’t move that far forward.

Now that Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans have come back in unique capacities, do you think it’s only a matter of time before Scarlett Johansson is making her signature pose in the MCU again?

I will preface by saying that I have no idea, but I don’t think so. I feel like her end in Endgame and then her epilogue with our Black Widow prequel were so lovely. So I would be surprised, but I know nothing about that. I have very little knowledge of what’s going on with Doomsday right now.

Did you ever have a draft of Thunderbolts* in which Yelena does Natasha’s pose again?

Maybe very early on. I don’t think I would’ve done it to have just done the same joke again …

Without calling attention to it was what I had in mind. 

Yeah, I can’t remember the different angle I would’ve had on it. But there’s some drafts from a while ago because we were stalled by the strike. There’s a lot of early drafts that dealt with the fact that Valentina had sent Yelena to go after Hawkeye, but as more time passed, I didn’t know if that was the right touchstone to call on people to remember when it happened four years ago (in Black Widow and Hawkeye). So things shift all the time, but I can’t remember a specific poser joke. (Writer’s Note: After anothing viewing, Alexei launches Yelena à la Steve Rogers and Natasha in The Avengers. Yelena also does a pose en route to hugging Bob that is somewhat reminiscent of Natasha.)

Was Yelena going to confront Val about what Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) confirmed to be faulty intel in Hawkeye? Do you think Val purposefully misled Yelena?

Early drafts began with Yelena confronting Valentina about ordering the Clint Barton hit, which was one of my favorite scenes that eventually became not entirely relevant to the Thunderbolts* story. I loved it because it emphasized Valentina’s manipulation. Yelena entered the scene on fire, furious, accusing Valentina of setting her up to take out her sister’s killer, when, in reality, he was her best friend. Then Valentina completely flipped the script on Yelena.  I believe the line was: “Set you up? You mean paid you to do a job that, by the way, you didn’t even do? So I heard some bad gossip, pardon me for trying to motivate you. But this is your job, and asking questions isn’t a part of it.” And then that led into the conversation about how Yelena is unhappy with her job/life and wants to make a change towards something more constructive.

Jake Schreier told me that Sentry wasn’t in your draft that he read before he committed, but that he was added to the very next one. Was the depression theme born out of Sentry? Or did you have some of those seeds planted already? 

I think he might be wrong on that by one draft, but I’d have to check the timeline. I really, really wanted to end the third act with a hug, with an emotional moment, as opposed to a beating into submission. So there were a lot of versions where Valentina had planted this kind of timebomb inside John Walker, and the goal was to make him the most unlikeable person on the team. He then becomes the monster, and they have to talk him down. It didn’t ever totally work. 

But thank God for my time in the Marvel Writers Program. I read the Sentry run back then, and in thinking about another villain that they can’t beat in a punching fight, I was like, “Wasn’t there a Superman who also had a dark side to him?” So I went back and read some of it, and it was very much like, “Yeah, The Sentry is the golden God of pure goodness, and the Void is pure evil. That can just as easily work for heroic ambition and self-esteem versus depression and self-loathing and loneliness and isolation.” So, yeah, it always was (planted). Once we saw that and realized that all the character arcs were embodied in one person who could be the physical antagonist, that’s when the movie really locked together. 

But I’m surprised. I thought that there was a draft with the Sentry before Jake came on. I remember him really locking into the Void Space. My idea of the Void Space was a lot more ethereal and dreamy. But his was more Being John Malkovich room mazes of very real, grounded stuff. So that helped incredibly in visualizing it and making it feel more unsettling.

I had someone call me earlier to say that her husband saw Thunderbolts* last night with his friends, and that they had a great time before speaking about mental health. The ultimate goal is for the audience to have a great time, and if there’s this added benefit of having meaningful conversations, how great is that?

You were all there at roughly the same time, but did you know Jake, Jon Watts or Chris Ford at NYU?

No, I met Jon Watts during the Spider-Man: Homecoming reshoots, and we ran down the list of teachers and all that. So we were right next to each other, and we probably rode in the same elevators a bunch of times or passed each other on the streets. But I didn’t know any of them until we got out here, and they’re a cool crew of people. When Jake came on, he showed me a bunch of the weird videos they’d shot in Brooklyn when they got out of college, and it seemed so fun. I didn’t have the same kind of creative ambition amongst my friend group. I guess we did do some videos, but theirs were just way better. (Laughs.)

Thunderbolts* ends with a Fantastic Four-branded ship headed straight for Earth-616 from their parallel Earth. I assumed this would be answered in The Fantastic Four: First Steps like the handoff of Fury’s pager from Avengers: Infinity War’s post-credit scene to Captain Marvel’s mid-credit scene. But it was shot by the Russos on the Avengers: Doomsday set, potentially as part of Doomsday.

I can’t speak to that part. 

In any event, what do you make of this bridge between Thunderbolts* and The Fantastic Four: First Steps? 

I don’t think I can say anything, honestly. I can’t take credit for that tag scene either. I believe (co-writer) Joanna Calo wrote that, and I’m very jealous of it. It’s so funny and good. One of my favorite parts of the whole movie is John Walker saying, “I don’t know what any of these buttons do, nobody labeled them.” (Laughs.) That, for me, is one of the funniest things.

Have you seen The Fantastic Four: First Steps at this point? 

I have seen one cut of Fantastic Four, but it was before additional photography. 

Can you share an adjective or two? 

I will share a proper noun: Galactus. That’s all I’m going to say.

Ryan Coogler’s 1932-set vampire movie Sinners has become a cultural phenomenon, and I’m sure that everybody at Marvel is elated for him. That said, has it made the Blade situation slightly more frustrating since there’s clearly an appetite for vampiric mayhem? (Costume designer Ruth E. Carter recently confirmed that, prior to Coogler hiring her for Sinners, she’d been prepping a now-defunct 1920s-set Blade. Pearson was a co-writer on the overall project.)

I cannot talk about The Blade situation. I’m so sorry. I wish I could, but I can’t. Sinners, though, that movie rules.

What else is on the horizon for you?

I’ve been working on this movie Fast and Loose for Netflix. It’s an action movie with a fun premise. (Writer’s Note: Will Smith and Michael Bay are attached.) I wanted this (other) deal to close so I could tell you guys, but there’s a franchise at a different studio that I’m hoping to reboot soon. They just couldn’t get the numbers straight, so I can’t say it. But hopefully we can talk about it during Fantastic Four.

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Thunderbolts* is now playing in movie theaters nationwide.