I was giddy walking out of seeing Thunderbolts* for the first time back in May, not because of the action scenes or the superpowers on display or the implications for the future of the MCU, all of which were great and helped make this one of the better Marvel movies in recent years, but because it had me feeling a way I thought was lost to me forever when it comes to this mega-franchise — invested in a romantic relationship. And even better, I’ve been able to participate in this fun along with other fans, because I’m not the only one.
Thunderbolts* has brought out the playful side of the Marvel fandom in a way we haven’t seen in a while, and it’s no surprise as to why. People are suckers for a found family dynamic, and this ensemble of rag-tag, underdog characters quipping back and forth is a winning combo. The audience knows almost all the characters in this movie already, but Thunderbolts* introduces us to Bob (aka Robert Reynolds aka The Sentry aka The Void), and he fits in so well that it seems crazy we had to go this long without him.
Every fangirl alive knows how this goes. I can’t speak for anyone else, but my social media feeds have been chock full of Bob for the past few months. What’s that? Another slideshow of Bob moments set to the most popular songs on TikTok? (I know, I know, that’s how the algorithm works and blah blah blah.) And a new beloved cutie means one thing above all else: shipping! Yelena and Bob have the internet fan(girl)dom in tatters, and I could not be more here for it. As I said, given Marvel’s frankly abysmal track record when it comes to romance, I thought I was done with shipping in the MCU. But Yelena Belova deserves all the love in the world, and the way this movie puts her and Bob together…these two have the goods.
You’ve seen the movie; I don’t need to rehash the whole thing. But it’s all there. Their moments in the Vault scenes alone make it clear that Thunderbolts* is setting up Bob and Yelena as a unit of some kind. Bob ends up witnessing Yelena’s first shameful experience from her Red Room training because they were touching hands as they lay unconscious. Yelena makes sure Bob is okay after Walker goes after him by touching his head as she asks him if he’s hurt. They’re even physically tied together at one point as they try to fight their way out of the vault, and you know what they say: the couple who try and make it out of an assassination attempt alive by looping a fire hose around their waists to prevent getting separated, stay together! When Bob “sacrifices” himself by getting riddled with bullets so the others can escape, it’s only Yelena’s face we see as she reacts to what she thinks is his death. Walker also formed a relationship with him, no matter how antagonistic, and yet the camera pays him no mind. After just their first meeting, the Yelena and Bob relationship is already the emotional core of the rest of the film.
Don’t think I didn’t take an incredibly smug sip of my ICEE when the first thing Bob asked after waking up in Valentina’s tower in New York was “What happened to Yelena?” Not what happened to THEM, or THE OTHERS, what happened to YELENA, SPECIFICALLY. He’s not the only one who’s worried. When our reluctant team makes it to the tower to stop Val’s plan and rescue Bob from her clutches, the others are surprised by his reveal as The Sentry, but Yelena looks truly upset and dismayed. Seeing Sentry’s seemingly indestructible powers is a nice bit of superhero worldbuilding, but the entire fight scene is really about Bob and Yelena.
Yelena: “You can trust me, I know you.”
Sentry (but really still Bob deep down, as Yelena can see: “I don’t think that you do.”
Yelena: *betrayed*
Even when Sentry starts laying the beatdown on the Thunderbolts, Yelena still tries to stop it from escalating, and at the end of it all, her real hurt lies not in having her ass handed to her, but in the feeling that she’s lost yet one more person that she had come to care about. So when The Void takes over and starts destroying the city, in the ultimate act of faith that Bob is still reachable and truly needs her help, Yelena goes into the darkness after him.
The sequence inside the Void is the most poignant of the film. Yelena fights through her own shame to get to Bob, finally finding him trapped in the root of his pain. His abusive childhood made him believe he was worthless, that he “always makes things worse,” and nothing as he got older led to him seeing himself any differently. Yelena knows what that’s like, and the Void acts as a pod for these two poor little peas, giving them some time together to really bring home the point of Thunderbolts* — none of us is better off alone. Nobody is perfect, everyone’s at least a little bit of a mess, but the right people will stick around regardless. For as depressing a location as the Void is, it really does allow for some uplifting stuff. Ava, Walker, Bucky, and Alexi burst through the walls to help Yelena and Bob escape, willing to re-experience their own traumatic pasts to do so. It’s Bob’s past they need to worry about as they try to make their escape, but The Void appears in…the Void to prey on all of Bob’s worst fears and insecurities in order to keep the group there forever. The other Thunderbolts are pinned down and snarled up in the mechanisms of the room, leaving Bob to go it alone. Nothing can quite compel him to push back until it sinks in that Yelena is in real danger.
“Don’t hurt her,” pleads Bob, as Walker stands next to him, impaled through the chest with metal shrapnel. But Yelena is not hurt, because her man needs her! Bob is trying to fight against it, but The Void is slowly consuming him, and Yelena somersaults across the room in Olympic fashion to save him. Not by taking on The Void herself, but by wrapping her arms around Bob and assuring him simply, “I’m here.” The rest of the team make their way to them and try to pull Bob away, but Yelena is the one who just holds him, anchoring him with the physical reminder that he’s not alone.
Back in New York, with their final moment —
Yelena: “We stick together from now on.”
Bob: “That’s nice.”
Boblena cemented themselves in my Pantheon of Ships. Welcome, you two. I have impeccable taste, so you’re in excellent company.
Neither Florence Pugh nor Lewis Pullman has said anything conclusive about the future of Yelena and Bob’s relationship, because of course they haven’t. Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier stated in a recent interview that while the two have chemistry, romance isn’t what they were going for with these two, but that he thinks fans’ Boblena love is “really cute.” Again, no surprise. Everyone involved in the MCU has it drilled into them to say nothing when possible and outright lie if they have to.
More interesting to me is what Marvel writer Devin Greyson, who introduced the character Yelena Belova to the comics in 1999, said in a 2020 interview. In her mind, Yelena is “probably more likely to identify as asexual than to follow Nat’s romantic path…” The MCU, of course, is not a carbon copy of the comic books, and vacillates between pulling directly from their pages to using them as only the slightest inspiration. So the two Yelenas might not be the same in that regard, but let’s assume for a moment that they are. Would veering off her sister’s romantic path really be the worst thing for Yelena? We all remember the Natasha/Bruce disaster: randomly thrown together with absolutely no basis, and the added bonus of Nat thinking she’s a monster because she can’t have biological children. (Joss Whedon, truly what the f…) Yelena being somewhere on the asexual spectrum and her feelings about being queer would be interesting and worthy things to explore in the MCU. Is she asexual but not aromantic, and still longs for a partner? Maybe she’s demisexual, and Bob makes her feel a way that’s different and new. Many fans would love to get to know that side of her.
Avengers: Doomsday already seems wildly overstuffed, so it remains to be seen how much time will be dedicated to Yelena and Bob and their relationship, in whatever form it may take. And maybe fans really are making mountains out of molehills (it would hardly be the first time), but that’s what fandom’s for. We’ve been doing it forever. Whether Thunderbolts* intended to or not, it planted the shipping seeds, and we’ve got nothing but time and passion to take it from there and make it a load-bearing pillar of Marvel going forward.
Thunderbolts* is available on both digital and physical media now. The summer of Boblena continues!
First Featured Image Credit: ©Marvel
My exact thoughts on their chemistry. Because of Boblena I’ve never been more excited about the MCU.