From the Void to Connection: How Thunderbolts* Moved Me as an Adult Child of Divorce
Marvel Studios, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
I am not ashamed to admit it: I am a sucker for superhero movies! Even as a little girl, I was way more interested in superheroes, sci-fi and fantasy than I was Barbie dolls or princesses. It was around my middle school and high school years that Star Wars released Episodes I, II and III and Toby Maguire starred in (what I call) the original Spiderman Trilogy. Since then, superhero movies in particular have exploded in the pop culture scene, with Marvel movies being by far the most popular. It was like a dream come true when everyone else seemed to realize how amazing superhero movies are! They just kept coming, getting better and better!
Until they didn’t. IMHO.
Recently, my husband took me to see the new Marvel movie Thunderbolts* as a birthday present. My obsession with superhero movies still seems to compel me to view the new movies, but I was not expecting anything amazing. As of late, I have become more and more disenchanted with the Marvel franchise.
But….I was more than pleasantly surprised!
In fact, I was impressed and even moved by the characters, plot and themes!
For me, the most important theme was that of despair and redemption. I went to the theater expecting to be entertained, at least mildly, but I left feeling profoundly seen and heard because of the story and characters in the film.
There is one character and two scenes in particular which I have been pondering since I saw them, because they resonate with my own healing journey. I want to simply share with you how these scenes affected me and then offer a guided reflection for your own further reflection and healing.
Warning: Spoilers ahoy! Jump ship now if you have not yet seen the movie and hate it when endings are ruined. (I totally fall into that category…someone told me the plot twist to the movie The Sixth Sense before I got a chance to watch it. I still mourn the loss of the experience!)
Please note I am by no means a qualified movie critic. I am not here to break down the stellar acting, the brilliant cinematography, or the three movements of the story arc. I would not even know where to start with those things and I am throwing around random terms I have heard before spewing from the mouths of real movie critics! I will say though, Rotten Tomatoes gave Thunderbolts* an 88% rating and Captain America: Brave New World only got 48%. So at the very least, my senses seem to align with the general public on this one!
To begin with, I want to touch on one of the characters and why I felt refreshed and encouraged by her story and actions. There are quite a few characters in the movie, but Yelena Belova, played by Florence Pugh, would be closest to what you might call the main character. She is the sister of Natasha Romanov, aka Black Widow, and through previous movies we have learned that she, Natasha, and a host of other young girls were basically taken and brainwashed to become assassins.
The whole history is not terribly important. The important part is that she has a very dark and violent past, most of which was not originally chosen by her. I do not know about you, but I can definitely relate to that situation. My parents divorced when I was only two years old. Although I have never killed anyone, nor do I plan on ever doing so, I have felt a connection to Yelena from the first time she was introduced in the movie Black Widow. The details of her childhood may differ from mine, but the experience of being stuck in a life of brokenness and sin, by no choice of my own, hits home.
Really though, what I appreciate most about her character is that she is so often dark, cranky, and very rough around the edges. I love that they did not try to gloss over the trauma she has experienced. They let her be real and gritty and imperfect.
The deep, dark parts of my own heart need and respond to such characters. They feel much more real and much closer to my own lived experience.
I am not an optimist. It is difficult for me to ‘look on the bright side.’ I struggle to be kind to others. I am easily irritated by the failures of myself and others. I mull over the dark events of my past and wonder if I will ever be free from their effects.
These are real struggles for me, and watching Yelena wrestle with these same issues touched these deep places and, interestingly, allowed some light to shine on them as they were brought to the surface.
On to the two scenes which I found most impactful.
From the beginning of the film, it’s made clear that Yelena is struggling with the darkness inside her heart. As previously revealed in the movie Black Widow, Yelena was a Russian operative from the time she was a baby. I am really tempted here to delve into Yelena’s whole back story because it is incredibly interesting, but the important part to understand is that she has been taken, controlled, and traumatized repeatedly since childhood. She also has a complicated relationship with a father figure of sorts named Alexei Shostakov, played by David Harbour.
In Thunderbolts*, Yelena and Alexei are still trying to work out what exactly their relationship entails. This leads to what I found to be one of the most powerful scenes in the movie.
Everything has just failed miserably for the ‘heroes’ (really a band of misfits and lost souls trying to find redemption for their past sins), as things are wont to do towards the end of any good story. In this darkness-before-the-dawn-moment, Yelena spirals into despair and Alexei follows her, trying his best to be a father to her. She turns to him in her agony, tears streaming down her already dirty and bloody face and pours out her heart:
Yelena: Daddy, I'm so alone. I don't have anything anymore. All I do is sit, and look at my phone, and think of all the terrible things that I've done; and then I go to work, and then I drink, and then I come home to no-one, and I sit and think of all the terrible things I've done again and again and I go crazy…
Alexei: Yelena, stop. Stop, we all have things that we regret.
Yelena: No, but I have so many!
Thunderbolts* (2025). TV Tropes. (n.d.).
The first thing that struck me while watching was that she called him ‘Daddy,’ which was different from how she had addressed him previously. I knew immediately, from that single word, that she was speaking from a different place in her heart. She was speaking as her younger self—a little girl, desperate and alone, in need of connection and honesty.
This hit me particularly hard because in therapy I have recently been connecting to my younger self, specifically my two-year-old self in the moment when I found out my dad had left. What I found in entering that space is that the deepest pain I feel there is that of being alone—and what I most desire in that moment is for someone to hear my pain and sit with me in it. In fact, I find, as Yelena displayed in the movie, a desperation for someone to be with me in the darkness.
I have often felt alone in life. It has been, sadly, a prevalent feeling for me, even in childhood. When I saw Yelena’s pain and heard her tell her Daddy how she felt alone, something deep inside me ached terribly and felt relieved at the same time. Watching her struggle with this same pain made me aware, again, of the pain of feeling alone, and also made me feel understood since, ironically, I was not alone in feeling alone.
Shortly after this moment, Yelena, touched and empowered in many ways by the connection she now feels with Alexei, even in the midst of her own darkness, brings that same healing to another character.
A seemingly random character in the beginning, Bob (Robert Reynolds, played by Lewis Pullman), becomes more and more important as the plot develops. He and Yelena share a connection from the start as Bob shares with her about the darkness he feels inside himself. Bob confides in Yelena that he feels worthless, as if there is just a ‘void’ inside of him (a feeling Yelena herself has already admitted to feeling in the opening scene of the movie). He asks her advice as to what she does with such feelings and, in a moment of comic relief, Yelena tells him, “You shove it way down. You just push it…down.”
As Bob’s true role in the plot unfolds, it comes to light that he has gone through an experimental procedure which was intended to create a superhero. Now, in his ‘lighter’ moments, Bob is the Golden Guardian, clothed in shining armor and a beacon of good. In his ‘darker’ moments, which are triggered towards the end of the movie after he is rejected and betrayed by the woman he had come to see as a mother figure, he becomes the Void, a being clothed in darkness with only pinpricks of light for eyes and who sucks everything around him into that same darkness.
In the climax of the movie, Yelena travels into the void, into the darkness of Bob’s memories. There she encounters, with Bob, the most traumatic moments of his life (which, relevantly to us ACODs, include major family dysfunction and rejection). She encourages him to face the darkness he has feared and avoided for so long - but to do it with her, and with the other misfit heroes who came searching for them both.
Eventually, they come to the heart of the void and Bob comes face to face with his alter ego.
While Yelena and the others are held captive by the Void, deep inside Bob’s psyche, Bob engages in hand to hand combat with the manifestation of his darkness. He gets angry and starts beating the Void, holding him down and punching him over and over again.
At this point, I was sitting there thinking to myself….’Hmmm…This isn’t how my therapist taught me to deal with these places of shame and darkness. He keeps telling me to give them space and to be gentle with them. This seems like the opposite of that advice. I thought they were going in the right direction here, but I guess Hollywood is about to get it wrong again. Prepare for another story of conquering it all by strength and will power. Oh well.’
Boy, was I in for a surprise!
As Bob beats himself (his more shameful parts of himself) to a pulp, the audience and Yelena notice that Bob himself is starting to become covered in darkness. She realizes that he needs what she needed to experience in her place of deepest darkness and shame: someone to sit with him in the darkness.
In this powerful moment Yelena and the other characters rally around Bob: embracing him, every part of him, and helping him to know he is not facing the darkness on his own. It was a tremendous scene.
For a long time, my only response to the dark places of my heart was shame and hatred. I would feel ashamed that I was not strong enough to fight the darkness, to figure it all out and fix everything I saw as broken in myself. Very, very slowly, God has been teaching me that I am not alone in the darkness and that gentleness and compassion are stronger than shame and hatred.
Although I could probably continue writing about these themes and characters for many more pages, I want to wrap this up by making a point the movie could not.
In the end, it is good and wonderful to see the characters embrace one another and find healing together. Having companions in the healing journey who love and understand you cannot be understated. We were made for communion with one another.
But ultimately the only one who can truly give us the healing we desire, the full acceptance of ourselves and revelation of our goodness and worth, is God Himself. Just as Yelena and the other characters were able to travel with one another into their deepest places of shame and darkness, God truly desires to reveal to us His presence at every moment of our lives.
Sometimes, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we are blinded by our own pain and unable to recognize Him so we feel alone and abandoned. I have come to understand that a key step in healing is opening myself to God’s grace so as to recognize God’s presence in every moment of my life.
The deeper I have travelled into my own darkness, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the more I have come to know and understand how passionately God desires to simply be with my pain, to hold me in His arms and tell me how much He loves me.
When I call out to God and say, “Daddy, I am so alone,” He comes to me. Every. Single. Time. And, then, despite the darkness and the pain, I come to know and believe that I am not alone.
I know that when you open your heart and call to Him, He will not hesitate to make Himself known to you, His beloved.
(Also, go see Thunderbolts*! Not a paid endorsement - as if, ha - but very worth your time.)
Prayer:
Eternal God, in Whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion — inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to Your holy will, which is Love and Mercy itself.
(The above prayer was found online here.)
About the Author:
Stephanie is a wife and mother of three boys. She and her family live in Pennsylvania. Her husband works for their local parish and she homeschools their boys. She likes reading, watching documentaries, playing board/card games and going for walks without her phone.
Also, special thanks to Bethany Meola, Vice President and Board Secretary of Life-Giving Wounds. This blog post would not have come to fruition without her encouragement, editing skills and excitement for the topic.
Reflection Questions for Small Groups or Individuals:
If you have seen Thunderbolts*, how did these scenes impact you?
What other movies have impacted you in this way?
How do you deal with places of shame and darkness?
Have you found healing with others, such as in a group setting?
Healing happens when we journey together.
If Stephanie’s story resonated with you, consider joining a Life-Giving Wounds retreat or support group this fall. You do not have to carry the darkness alone.
Together, we can walk into the light.