Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for ‘Thunderbolts*’
Ding-dong, the Taskmaster is dead. Better to rip the Band-Aid right off, not that anybody would really feel it.Thunderbolts*tried hard to convince us that it would be full of surprises that would shake up the MCU, buteverybody could see that the writing was on the wall for Antonia Dreykov (Olga Kurylenko). While the debate overBlack Widow’sstanding in the ranking of MCU films has long been debated, almost everyone agrees that its depiction of Taskmaster was a huge whiff. Since Marvel is going through a phase of cutting out what didn’t work in favor of what did work,it should come as no surprise that they got rid of her as quickly as possible.
Marvel Got Rid of Taskmaster ASAP
The mismatch made in Heaven that kicks offThunderbolts*’s plot is that Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), and Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen) walk into a ba- I mean, shadow government warehouse.These three showing up makes sense because we’ve seen in prior films that each of them had explicit ties to Countess Valentina(Julia Louis-Dreyfus), hence why she sent them all to kill each other. Taskmaster suddenly showing up makes no sense, sincewe’ve seen her have no connection to any of Valentina’s power-grabbing activities, and so her inclusion seems like a corporate mandate to find the easiest excuse to take her off the board. I can only imagineKevin Feigeflipping through a Thunderbolts comic, noticing that Taskmaster was a member at some point in time, and deciding that’s all the excuse needed to shoehorn in her abrupt cameo. I couldn’t believe they actually roped Olga Kurylenko into showing up just so we could see her face for seven seconds, as if we needed proof that this was the real Taskmaster. I will say,they at least gave Taskmaster a death worthy of her reputation, in that she gets completely rocked by a swift shot in the head by Ava, her poorly defined copycat powers getting outclassed by the trump card of Ava’s Ghost teleportation powers. She could copycat every physical move, but she couldn’t copycat being like the dead until…well, you know.
Marvel Kept Taskmaster Hidden in the Marketing
The clearest sign that something was amiss was thatOlga Kurylenko did essentially no press whatsoever for this film. She’s done no interviews, no photoshoots, no acknowledgment of her possible return to one of the more high-profile roles of her career. Even going as far back as the Comic Con presentation where the whole main cast came out to hype up the film, she wasn’t there. When actors are definitively part of a major blockbuster film, they’re obligated to endure the purgatory of months of press…unless they’re not actually that involved in the film at all. Having an actor sidestep press for a role that’s either extremely secretive or just plain small isn’t unprecedented, as shown by instances like whenGary Oldmanwent uncredited inHannibal.
Marvel even went so far as to dupe us with shots in the trailers and promo images that have Taskmaster standing around in scenes that she’s definitely not in, for obvious reasons. This is also not unprecedented, asMarvel has been known to either use alternate footage or digitally alter shots for trailers, giving the illusion that some characters are or aren’t involved in scenes that they actually aren’t or are in, respectively. This somewhat stoked the hope among fans that this was Marvel hinting that they’d do a grand switcheroo and reveal that Taskmaster is actually Baron Zemo (Daniel Brühl), evoking an infamous moment from the comics. But in the spirit of Taskmaster’s sharp exit stage left, that was yet another disappointment.
There Was Nothing Else To Do With Taskmaster
Except…is Taskmaster dying a disappointment?Her initial appearance inBlack Widownever sat right with anyone, as it was a pretty lame attempt at rewriting a character that had no need to be altered. Turning Taskmaster into a blankTerminatorwas not only a total waste of a character that comics nerds really wanted to see in the MCU, but was also a fairly tasteless attempt at afeminist empowerment messageabout men having control over women’s bodies. The writers gave her a backstory that was a huge retcon that kind of damaged our perception of Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) as a mysterious and well-intentioned world-renowned spy, and made Taskmaster’s characterization way too silly for what was an otherwise deadly serious attempt at commentary on human trafficking and misogynist power structures. As time passed,Taskmaster became an emblem of the follies of Marvel’s storytelling approach, their incessant need to make their characters dissimilar to the comics, and the limitations of their capitalist-limited attempts at progressive advocacy. In short, she was just a bad hang, andThunderbolts*maybe did her a favor by taking her out of her misery.
Thunderbolts*is now in theaters.
Thunderbolts*
