When writer Eric Pearson sat down to watch Thunderbolts, something shocked him. Which was unexpected, considering Pearson is not just credited with creating the film’s story but co-writing its screenplay with Joanna Calo. And yet, as the film unfolded, Pearson was surprised to see a character he had written a full and complete arc for, no longer make it to the end of the film.
Pearson, who wrote Black Widow and helped write Fantastic Four: First Steps and Thor: Ragnarok, was surprised to see that Taskmaster, the Black Widow villain played by Olga Kurylenko, died in the film’s first act. “When I sat down to watch the first cut, one thing was totally different and shocked the hell out of me, and it was that,” Pearson told Polygon. “Everything else, I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s the movie that I wrote!’ But that decision … it was decided after my work.”
In Pearson’s version of the film, Taskmaster not only survives to the end, but she also plays an integral role in the team. For example, her inclusion gave Ava (Hannah John-Kamen), who was similarly given powers in a lab, someone to relate to. “Ava, having won her autonomy earlier in the chronology than Taskmaster, was kind of big-sistering her a little bit, in a way of ‘how to break free and be your own person,’” Pearson says.
In addition, because Taskmaster had memory issues, there was a running gag where she would forget everything that the group had been through and would keep trying to complete her task of killing John Walker (Wyatt Russell). “On the comedy side, she was struggling with her own memory-loss stuff, and there was a gag where she just kept restarting the fight and forgetting that they had made up and become friends,” Pearson said. “They would be discussing the plan of how to get out [of the vault], and she’d just go after him again, and they’d all have to pig-pile on each other, and pull her off, and be like, ‘No, we know each other! We’ve had this conversation before!’”
Pearson isn’t sure exactly why the character was cut, but he thinks her death certainly raised the stakes and that the memory plot line may have run up against a bigger throughline that was similar. “[The memory storyline] could contribute as another reason why they chose to bring her out of the movie,” he said. “Bob was obviously having memory issues as a big part of his character.” And, of course, you couldn’t cut Bob.
Were you surprised, like one of the film’s writers, that Taskmaster died? Do you think her survival would’ve helped the movie at all? Let us know below.
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