Thunderbolts* (2025)

Thunderbolts (2025) may be the most emotionally honest entry in the modern superhero film catalogue. It isn’t just about villains and battles. It’s about depression. And not in a symbolic way. Depression is the villain. Not just one person’s struggle, but a force that hovers over everything. Something shared, something dark, something real.

The movie centers on Bob, a potential Avenger replacement known as the Sentry. His mind has fractured, and the Void, his depressed, destructive alter ego, has become more than a psychological struggle. It’s a literal threat. The Void covers the city in darkness and dread.

That’s where Thunderbolts becomes something more than genre. The real climax of the movie isn’t a battle. It’s a choice: Yelena, and others on the team, step into Bob’s darkness. Not with answers. Not with power. But with presence. They refuse to let him stay alone in the shadow. They choose to suffer with him.

In Christian terms, this is bearing one another’s burdens. It is Psalm 88 made visual: darkness as a companion, and yet still a cry heard. It’s the Gospel reimagined in the language of shared pain. Depression is not overcome with willpower or magic. It is met with compassion.

The film doesn’t resolve everything. That’s part of its strength. The Void is not defeated, just diminished. The darkness recedes, but the pain lingers. Bob is not fixed, but he is not alone. The healing is not complete, but it is real.

And isn’t that the Christian story? The resurrection doesn’t erase the cross. The scars remain. The promise this side of heaven is not that suffering will vanish, but that it will be shared. That light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Thunderbolts may be about superheroes, but it touches on something deeply human and deeply theological. It suggests that presence is more powerful than rescue, that empathy is stronger than spectacle. And that sometimes, the bravest thing you can do is stay with someone who can’t see the light and remind them it is still there.