Ranking Every Member Of Marvel's Thunderbolts From Weakest To Strongest

The Marvel Cinematic Universe's "Thunderbolts" will be a force to be reckoned with. There's Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), now fulfilling the title of Black Widow; her father Alexei Shostakov, aka Red Guardian (David Harbour), the Soviet Union's answer to Captain America; Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen), otherwise known as Ghost, a former S.H.I.E.L.D. operative who left the organization when she realized they wouldn't cure her intangibility as they promised; John Walker (Wyatt Russell), now known as U.S. Agent after he was fired from being Captain America after he killed someone; Antonia Dreykov, or Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), who can mimic the fighting styles of her opponents; Sentry, better known as Bob Reynolds (Lewis Pullman), who we don't know much about, but if the comics have anything to say will be notoriously powerful; Bucky Barnes, or the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), the team's leader, Steve Rogers' friend, and a man who had his memory wiped for years; and last but not least, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss), the leader of the CIA and the founder of the Thunderbolts.

These people will come together to form a team that, well, could be better. Not that there's anything wrong with them as individuals, but most have been villains or adversaries at one time or another. In fact, Val seems to be counting on that. These people were recruited, even though most of them belong in prison — or at least a work-release program. They're not quite as bad as DC's "Suicide Squad," but they're close. But who could do the most damage? We're ranking every member of the MCU's Thunderbolts from weakest to strongest. We've taken this very literally, and there are a lot of super soldiers on this team, so competition for the top slot is fierce.

Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine is an Italian countess, or so it would seem from her name. But she tells John Walker to call her Val — in his head — for expediency, making her seem much more American. That, and the fact that she's played by the quintessentially American star of Seinfeld and Veep, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss. Either way, she's deeply involved in the inner workings of American power.

In "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier," she gives John Walker a new black suit and the title U.S. Agent, a name she says will be needed more than Captain America for what's coming. In "Black Widow," she sends Yelena Belova after Hawkeye, whom she claims is responsible for the death of Yelena's adopted sister, Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson). And in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," as the new Director of the CIA, she arrests Everett Ross, her ex-husband, for conspiring with the Wakandans.

Clearly, Val is great at wielding the levers of power either behind the scenes, as in the cases of John Walker and Yelena Belova, or in front of them, as evidenced by the arrest of Everett Ross. However, in terms of raw power, she's fairly weak. In the comics, she's an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. with the fight training to match; in the MCU, she's good at manipulating people to do her bidding but has not exhibited any fighting skills so far. As a result, although Val is the one who founds the team, she won't be going into battle with them.

Yelena Balova, who has taken over her sister Natasha Romanoff's title of Black Widow, is a highly effective fighter. She was trained as a spy and assassin by the Red Room, the same setting where her sister was trained, making Yelena a better warrior than most. After overcoming the Red Room's mind control, she, along with her adopted family (Natasha, her "father" Alexei Shostakov aka Red Guardian, and her "mother" Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz)) brought down the organization — and we do mean brought down, as the Red Room was floating in the sky. After accomplishing this task in "Black Widow," Yelena, Alexei, and Melina began their shared work to find and deprogram other Black Widows the Red Room's mind control. In fact, that's what she was doing when the Blip happened and she turned to dust.

Five years later, when she came back from the Blip, Yelena discovered that Natasha was gone, having died in the interim. She was tending to Natasha's grave when Valentina Allegra de Fontaine came to tell her that she wanted Yelena to take out Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), the man who supposedly killed her sister. However, in "Hawkeye," Clint tells her that Natasha loved her and reveals details about Yelena and her sister's time together that only Natasha could have known. Yelena accepts that Natasha sacrificed herself for the greater good and ends up letting Clint live. All this being said, while Yelena is a scrappy fighter who can hold her own against most, she is still only human. As a result, she's the second weakest member of the Thunderbolts.

In the Marvel Comics Universe, Taskmaster is a man named Anthony Masters who was most likely born in the Bronx, New York and became a mercenary, an origin story that makes him very different from his Marvel Cinematic Universe counterpart. In fact, the only thing they share is the ability to mimic any fighter in the world. Otherwise, they don't have much in common, as the MCU's Taskmaster is a woman named Antonia Dreykov, who is the daughter of General Dreykov (Ray Winstone), the leader of the Red Room.

Although she was born into the family that controlled the Red Room, in "Black Widow," we learn that the General allowed Antonia to attend school and live in Budapest. That is, until she visited her father's office on the day that Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton bombed it. Both Antonia and the General survived, but Antonia suffered scarring that the General found revolting. So the General inserted a chip into her neck to disrupt her senses and make her compliant, placing her in the Red Room program, where he learned of her skill for mimicry and used it to make Antonia his finest assassin. He provided her with a suit so he wouldn't have to see her face and sent her on the Red Room's hardest missions. While Antonia is an impressive fighter, Natasha eventually overcomes her and frees her of her father's mind control.

Still, Taskmaster has a leg up on the Black Widows, including Yelena, because of her ability to mimic their fighting styles. The confusion caused by that can go a long way toward helping her win fights, even though it's debatable whether she could be considered superpowered because of it.

On the other hand, Red Guardian, whose given name is Alexei Shostakov, is definitely considered superpowered. In fact, he's the first and only super soldier to come out of the Soviet Union, so he's basically the U.S.S.R.'s answer to Captain America, as he likes to brag. Of course, Steve Rogers' fame eclipsed Alexei's. As seen in "Black Widow," after the Soviet Union broke up and he became Russian, he was sent to run a covert mission in America with Natasha Romanoff and Yelena Belova posing as his kids. Though the mission went well, he was eventually put in a Russian prison because he had a falling out with his friend General Dreykov. This led to him languishing for decades until Natasha and Yelena broke him out. At that point, he helped his adopted daughters and so-called wife take down Dreykov and the Red Room, donning the Red Guardian suit for the first time in decades.

In addition to his enhanced strength and durability, Alexei has greater stamina and agility than most people. He uses these skills to his advantage in battle, but despite his status as an expert combatant, he's, well, old and out of shape. He spent over two decades in prison without much to stimulate him other than arm wrestling matches to prove he's stronger than the other prisoners. He won all of those, but since nobody else there was a super soldier or a trained assassin, that's not a surprise. The lack of stimulation combined with his considerable weight gain made him less than an ideal sample of a super soldier. Still, he's able to take out almost anyone in a fight, even if it requires more effort than it did when he was younger.

John Walker spent his whole life trying to live up to the example set by Steve Rogers' Captain America (Chris Evans). And he probably thought he did a pretty good job of it, too, because when Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) donated Cap's shield to the Smithsonian in "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier," the U.S. government used it to create their own Captain America — an assignment they chose Walker for. He had earned the title by doing a great job in the U.S. military, but while Rogers was always an idealist, Walker is all too human. He becomes wary of the expectations placed on him and is unable to get either Sam or Bucky Barnes to honor his title as Captain America. As a result, he becomes increasingly violent and unstable, a fact that's exacerbated by him taking the Super Soldier Serum. His instability comes to a head when he kills a man with the shield after his best friend, Lemar Hoskins (Cle Bennett), is murdered.

Nonetheless, Walker has his redeeming qualities. Even though he travels to New York City to kill the woman who murdered his best friend, he decides instead to rescue the individuals trapped in a police van instead of continuing his quest for vengeance. He even gets a nod of approval from Wilson, the new Captain America, before he departs.

Even before taking the Super Soldier Serum, Walker was a formidable fighter, with greater speed and strength than most. After the serum, he has super strength that just a few people in the world can match or exceed. While his skillset needs some work, it seems like he is trying to redeem himself for some of his earlier missteps.

The third member of the Thunderbolts to have taken the Super Soldier Serum is Bucky Barnes. While he's also been known as the Winter Soldier, he may not want to go by that name as it's the call sign that HYDRA gave him when he was forced to work for the terrorist organization. Bucky has a history of violence, but he doesn't want to add to it. He was brainwashed by HYDRA into murdering people for 50 years, including Tony Stark's (Robert Downey Jr.) parents. But on his own, he's far from a bad guy. Unfortunately, the brainwashing remained accessible by people who knew how to trigger it. This was shown to be the case in "Captain America: Civil War" when Helmut Zemo (Daniel Bruhl) activated it, so Bucky went into cryostasis for a few years while Shuri (Letitia Wright) worked out how to remove HYDRA's control, once and for all.

Now free of anyone's influence but his own and sporting a shiny vibranium arm (he lost his real arm years ago), he's teamed up with Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson on multiple occasions. He's also been pardoned by the U.S. government and has sought to atone for his deeds as the Winter Soldier. But even without being mind-controlled, he still has enormous power. He can do things like catch a shield in midair and even beat Captain America in hand-to-hand combat, as we saw in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier." But as adept a fighter as he is, his one weakness could be his frame of mind, which may be used to convince him to atone for his sins by becoming the Thunderbolts' field leader.

In Marvel's comic book universe, Ghost is a man who strikes out against capitalist institutions. In the MCU, Ghost is a woman named Ava Starr, and she doesn't have any strong beliefs about capitalism or anything else. Instead, she just wants to make her pain stop. Since Ava was young, she's suffered from "molecular disequilibrium," a fancy way of saying that every cell in her body is constantly torn apart and put back together over and over again. This has caused her immeasurable pain, but it's made her uniquely powerful, too, giving her the ability to phase through things, a useful skill in battle. In fact, she was recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D. to be an elite assassin, but she left when she realized that they had no intention of curing her affliction.

Ava then learned that she only had weeks to live and, as a result, went after Hank Pym, Scott Lang, and Hope Van Dyne, which is what made her the villain of "Ant-Man and the Wasp." She wanted to extract the quantum energy from Janet Van Dyne, whom Pym was planning to finally rescue from the Quantum Realm after 30 years. Unfortunately, that could have killed Janet, so Ant-Man and the Wasp kept Ghost at bay. Once Janet returned, she was able to transfer a portion of her quantum energy to Ava to help with her condition. Forced into hiding, Ava kept in contact with the Pyms until they were killed by the Blip. No one knows what Ghost has been doing since then, but one thing's for sure: she's incredibly powerful. And if she can keep her phasing under control, she may be even more powerful in Thunderbolts than she was the last time we saw her.

Referred to simply as Bob in the "Thunderbolts" trailer, this gentleman seems rather scared and uncertain, especially when faced with the weapons and abilities of the Thunderbolts. It turns out, though, that Bob has no reason to be frightened because Bob is Sentry, one of the most powerful individuals in the Marvel Universe. While he hasn't been introduced into the MCU just yet, his Marvel Comics history goes back to 2000, when Paul Jenkins, Jae Lee, and Rick Veitch introduced the hero in his own five-issue miniseries, "The Sentry." There, readers learned that after an encounter with one of the many attempts at recreating the Super Soldier Serum, Bob becomes the superhero known as the Sentry and gains godlike powers, from flight to invulnerability to molecular manipulation and more.

Of course, Bob also has a dark side. His body is taken control of by the Void, which, unlike the Void in "Deadpool and Wolverine," is an entity who is as monstrous as the Sentry is good. Reed Richards and Doctor Strange put a stop to the Void by erasing everyone's minds of any memory of the Sentry, including Bob's. Though the Sentry went on to have more adventures in the comics, it's hard to say how much of that lore will be used in the MCU. Suffice it to say, though, that if he has even a fraction of his comic book counterpart's powers, he'll be the strongest member of the Thunderbolts by far.