Ideally, a marketing plot like this would result in a nice split… but that doesn’t feel true in this particular case. The Thunderbolts, being a surreptitious way of assembling a new version of Earth’s Mightiest Heroe,s always seemed like the most obvious answer to the presented riddle, and I was hoping for something a bit more advanced.

The meaning behind the asterisk in the Thunderbolts* title has finally been explained: The New Avengers. Promotional materials for the movie, including social media accounts, ads, theater standees, and more,

Thunderbolts just morphed into The New Avengers — and the transformation didn’t happen in a press release, it unfolded inside the movie itself. That asterisk in Thunderbolts wasn’t a typo — it was Marvel teasing its biggest title twist since Infinity War.