If you skipped Falcon And The Winter Soldier, you missed Julia Louis-Dreyfus having her debut Samuel L. Jackson moment, portraying the villainous Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine as she attempts to create a team of super baddies. She showed up again in Black Widow to set Yelena (Florence Pugh) after Hawkeye, and again in Wakanda Forever to arrest her ex-husband (!) Everett Ross (Martin Freeman), all in service of building toward 2024’s Thunderbolts.
In addition to Yelena, Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), Red Guardian (David Harbour), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), and Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), the team will now have the serious comedic chops of Ayo Edebiri.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Edebiri is joining the cast in an as-yet-unrevealed role, which means it’s unclear whether she’ll be suiting up in spandex of suiting as a government agent (the only two contractually allowed characters appearing in Marvel films post-Avengers). This incarnation of the team was founded by Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (now played by Harrison Ford after William Hurt’s death), but there’s never quite been a team construction like this throughout the comics run, so there are a ton of other super-powered characters that Edebiri could be playing.
Regardless of what the role is, this is great news because Edebiri is fantastic. She’s 1000% earned a profile boost, and hopefully continues to book bigger and bigger work to match the size of her talent.
If all of this is confusing, Captain America: New World Order hits theaters a couple months before Thunderbolts and will most likely give an even bigger tee-up to the antihero team-up.
(via The Hollywood Reporter)