Marvel’s upcoming Thunderbolts* movie is still shrouded in mystery, but we've finally gotten our first good look at the project thanks to the Thunderbolts teaser trailer. It doesn't reveal a lot about the plot of this MCU team-up. It does, however, give us our first look at Lewis Pullman as Bob, aka The Sentry. This Superman-esque hero is finally making his MCU debut, and that means the entire world should be very, very afraid.
Who is The Sentry, and why is he both the Marvel Universe’s greatest hero and its worst nightmare? Let’s break down the history of this mentally unstable hero and how he may fit into the plot of Thunderbolts*. These are the topics we cover here:
- Who Is Lewis Pullman’s Thunderbolts* Character The Sentry?
- The Sentry’s Powers and Abilities
- The Sentry’s Secret Origin
- The Sentry As an Avenger
- How The Sentry Fits Into the Thunderbolts* Movie
Who Is Lewis Pullman’s Thunderbolts* Character The Sentry?
The Sentry is quite possibly the most powerful superhero in the Marvel Universe. He’s also the most dangerous.
Once an ordinary man named Bob Reynolds, he consumed a serum that granted him “the power of a million exploding suns.” Unfortunately, that power comes at an incredible cost. There’s a dark side to The Sentry’s personality known as The Void. For every act of good The Sentry performs, The Void counteracts it with an evil deed. Fighting against his inner darkness and maintaining his sanity is a losing battle for Bob Reynolds. Still, when the times call for a powerful hero, there’s no one better suited to the job than The Sentry.
The Sentry’s Powers and Abilities
The Sentry’s powers stem from an experimental serum, one of the many formulas developed as a potential replacement for the Super Soldier Serum after World War II. The serum is said to accelerate his molecules an instant forward in time. What that means in practice is that The Sentry is an incredibly strong hero with an almost limitless array of powers.
As The Sentry, Bob’s strength is easily on par with heroes like Hulk and Thor. He can also fly and move at incredible speeds, has enhanced senses and is practically invulnerable. He can also absorb and project energy, allowing him to perform feats like firing energy blasts, teleportation and pacifying a rampaging Hulk. In terms of powers, The Sentry is truly Marvel’s answer to Superman.
As The Void, Bob is arguably even more powerful and dangerous. The Void is a shape-shifting, demonic entity that can do everything from controlling the weather to infesting the minds of others. The Void has easily withstood the combined might of the Avengers, X-Men and Fantastic Four, and even throwing it into the sun has proven to be a temporary solution.
The Sentry’s Secret Origin
The Sentry was created by Paul Jenkins, Rick Veitch and Jae Lee and debuted in the pages of the original The Sentry miniseries in 2000. That series introduces its title character as a forgotten hero from the Marvel Universe’s past. Even Bob Reynolds – a middle-aged, overweight married man – doesn’t remember that he used to be the hero nicknamed “The Golden Guardian of Good.”
Bob regains his memories and becomes The Sentry once more, only to discover his sworn enemy, The Void, has also returned. Over the course of the series, The Sentry’s history with characters like Hulk and the Fantastic Four is established, and The Sentry is retroactively inserted into Marvel continuity.
Ultimately, readers learn that The Sentry and The Void are two halves of the same coin. The world was made to forget about The Sentry in order to protect it from The Void’s wrath. Bob realizes he has no choice but to repeat that act in order to keep his dark side at bay. He once again erases the world’s collective memory of The Sentry, though the series is ambiguous as to whether Bob himself has truly forgotten about his superhuman selves.
The Sentry As an Avenger
The original The Sentry miniseries was a self-contained story, but the character did eventually go on to play a recurring role in the Marvel Universe. The Sentry officially became one of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in 2004’s New Avengers, joining a radically revamped team alongside characters like Spider-Man, Wolverine and Luke Cage.
New Avengers reintroduces The Sentry as a self-imposed prisoner of The Raft, one who intervenes to stop a massive supervillain jailbreak and reluctantly joins the team in the aftermath. Though a powerful asset to Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, The Sentry fights to preserve his sanity and once again keep The Void at bay.
When the world’s heroes are torn apart by the events of 2006’s Civil War, The Sentry sides with Iron Man’s pro-registration faction. He knows all too well the damage that unchecked power can wreak. The Sentry also proves vital in protecting the world from Hulk’s wrath in 2007’s World War Hulk.
However, The Sentry’s downfall begins in Marve’s 2009 storyline Dark Reign. As Norman Osborn takes control of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s replacement H.A.M.M.E.R., he recruits Bob Reynolds to join his “Dark Avengers.” The Sentry is manipulated into serving alongside villains like Bullseye, Venom and Ares. Osborn gambles that all those years of grappling with his Green Goblin persona will allow him to keep The Sentry under control. That turns out to not be the case.
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