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Lewis Pullman has been cast as Marvel’s most powerful and dangerous superhero.
Marvel’s upcoming Thunderbolts* movie will feature Lewis Pullman as Bob, aka The Sentry. But we also just found out via Marvel’s big announcement video that Pullman is also joining the cast of Avengers: Doomsday as well, implying that he is there to even the odds against Doom.
Who is Lewis Pullman’s Thunderbolts* character, The Sentry?
The Sentry is quite possibly the most powerful superhero in the Marvel Universe. He’s also the most dangerous.
Once an ordinary man named Bob Reynolds consumed a serum that granted him “the power of a million exploding suns.” That power came at an unimaginable cost. The Sentry has a darker half known as The Void. For every act of good The Sentry performs, The Void counteracts it with an evil deed, keeping a morbid balance only Thanos would love.
Maintaining his sanity and restraining his darker half is a losing battle for Bob Reynolds. Still, when the times call for a powerful hero, there’s no one better suited to the job than The Sentry, as evident as he was the only person to stand up to the Hulk during World War Hulk.
The Sentry’s powers and abilities
The Sentry’s powers stem from an experimental serum, one of the many formulas developed as a potential replacement for the Super Soldier Serum after World War II, as a part of an attempt to recreate Captain America. The serum is said to accelerate Bob’s molecules an instant forward in time. In practice, The Sentry is an incredibly strong hero with an almost limitless array of powers.
As The Sentry, Bob’s strength is easily on par with heroes like Hulk and Thor. He can also fly and move at incredible speeds, has enhanced senses, and is practically invulnerable. He can also absorb and project energy, allowing him to perform feats like firing energy blasts, teleportation, and pacifying a rampaging Hulk. He is Marvel’s Superman, but with a darker half who may or may not be a primordial God.
The Void is a shape-shifting, demonic entity that can do everything from controlling the weather to infesting the minds of others. The Void has easily withstood the combined might of the Avengers, X-Men, and Fantastic Four, and even throwing it into the Sun has proven to be a temporary solution.
The Sentry’s origin story
The Sentry was created by Paul Jenkins, Rick Veitch, and Jae Lee and debuted in the pages of the original The Sentry miniseries in 2000. That series introduces its title character as a forgotten hero from the Marvel Universe’s past. Even Bob Reynolds – a middle-aged, overweight married man – doesn’t remember that he used to be the hero nicknamed The Golden Guardian of Good.
Bob regains his memories and becomes The Sentry once more, only to discover his sworn enemy, The Void, has also returned. Throughout the series, The Sentry’s history with characters like Hulk and the Fantastic Four is established, and The Sentry is retroactively inserted into Marvel continuity.
Ultimately, readers learn that The Sentry and The Void are two halves of the same coin. The world was made to forget about The Sentry to protect it from The Void’s wrath. Bob realizes he has no choice but to repeat that act to keep his dark side at bay. He once again erases the world’s collective memory of The Sentry, though the series is ambiguous as to whether Bob himself has truly forgotten about his superhuman self.
How The Sentry fits into the Thunderbolts* movie and Avengers: Doomsday
To date, The Sentry hasn’t enjoyed much exposure outside of Marvel’s comics, apart from appearing in a handful of mobile games like Marvel Puzzle Quest, Marvel Future Fight, and Marvel Snap. But that will change soon, as Lewis Pullman has been cast as the Golden Guardian of Good in the MCU.
The Walking Dead’s Steven Yeun was originally cast as Sentry, but the role became vacant after Yeun had to drop out of the Thunderbolts line-up due to scheduling conflicts. The movie was pushed from the 2024 release slate following a major reshuffle in the aftermath of the dual writers and actor strikes, leaving Deadpool & Wolverine as the only MCU movie to release in 2024.
Pullman is debuting in 2025’s Thunderbolts*, appearing alongside familiar MCU faces like Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes, Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova and David Harbour’s Red Guardian. Given this roster’s relative lack of powers, battling The Sentry would certainly be a monumental task for the Thunderbolts.
It also remains to be seen if Marvel will retroactively insert Bob into its sprawling canon or chart a new origin story. Either way, we expect great things, and Pullman will surely deliver.
As for Avengers: Doomsday, Pullman will also be appearing alongside a ton of other actors from across the MCU, not to mention some fellow Thunderbolts players like Florence Pugh (Yelena Belova), David Harbour (Red Guardian), Wyatt Russell (John Walker / U.S. Agent), and Hannah John-Kamen (Ghost).
That means Doomsday is going to have characters from Thunderbolts, Fantastic Four, the traditional Avengers line-up from the Infinity Saga, and many more.
The Sentry may be the deus-ex machina against God Emperor Doom, but that will only be answered a year later.
Thunderbolts* hits theatres on May 2nd, 2025, and Avengers Doomsday hits theatres on May 1st, 2026.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
