Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… Sentry?! Marvel’s answer to Superman made his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in Thunderbolts*, with Top Gun: Maverick actor Lewis Pullman portraying Bob Reynolds/Sentry and his villainous alter-ego, the Void. (Like his comic counterpart introduced in 2000’s Sentry #1, a secret formula gave Robert “Bob” Reynolds the power of a million exploding suns as the Golden Guardian of Good — with a dark side.)
Unlike DC’s Man of Steel, however, Bob’s super-man Sentry became a supervillain as the shadowy Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) unwittingly unleashed Bob’s Void persona when she sicced her blonde-haired, gold-clad caped crusader on the team of “disposable” do-gooders: Yelena Belova/Black Widow (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian (David Harbour), John Walker/U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), and Ava Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen).
On Instagram, Marvel Studios senior illustrator John Staub shared official concept art of Pullman’s superhero suit as it appears in Thunderbolts*, offering a closer look at the comic-accurate costume’s MCU flourishes (like golden piping and “S”-shaped golden belt buckle).
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In the comics, Sentry harkened back to the classic superheroes of the Silver Age. Created by writer Paul Jenkins and artist Jae Lee as “the greatest hero of them all” and a “Golden Guardian of Good” (in alliterational, hyperbolic Stan Lee style). A Jack Kirby-esque comic-book-within-a-comic, titled Startling Stories featuring The Sentry, revealed the old-school secret origin of “Robby” Reynolds (who, as it turned out, had a modern backstory apropos of 2000s Marvel).
Pullman previously told Men’s Health that the hardest part of playing this golden god was “finding a body type that worked for both Bob and for Sentry.”
“They’re very different people, and they have very different purposes within the story. To make that transition both believable and shocking within a very short amount of time was very challenging,” Pullman said of Bob’s transformation into the Sentry, the sole survivor of Val’s Sentry Project. “But I was lucky to be in the hands of this awesome trainer, Brendan Johnston, who just said, ‘We’re not trying to build a lot of mass.’ We were trying to build definition, and all those small, intricate, sinewy muscles that will pull the light. That was done a lot with boxing, which I hadn’t done much of but that I really loved.”
He continued, “I’ve continued to do it since we wrapped production, because I don’t like cardio. I don’t like feeling like I want to die when I work out, because then I’m not going to get back in the gym. I have to make it fun for myself so that I can continue incentivizing getting my butt out of bed and into the gym. Boxing was a great way to do that, because you forget that you’re exerting yourself as much as you are, and you’re working so many parts of your body. You’re recruiting all these muscles that are normally kind of dormant.”
In another difference from the authentic Superman, Val designed Sentry to resemble what she called a “classic hero.” That meant dyeing Bob’s hair golden blonde and outfitting him with the kind of cape that Thor or Vision wear. This manufactured superhero-by-committee was to be “all-powerful, invincible, stronger than all the Avengers combined into one, and soon to be known as Earth’s mightiest hero.”
“That was a wig. Lane Friedman was our incredible wig master, and she designed it in a way that felt like it was just a little off-putting,” Pullman said. “It’s not supposed to look like our ideal version of a superhero; it’s supposed to be a little off-kilter. It’s supposed to make you think, There’s something wrong here, and I can’t quite put a finger on it. And so there’s something a little creepy about it. It’s not as glorious as Thor’s hair! I felt weird with blond hair—it’s probably not something I would do in my day-to-day life!”
Pullman’s Bob will return in the just-delayed Avengers: Doomsday, dated for December 2026. Marvel’s Thunderbolts*, AKA The New Avengers, is now playing only in theaters.
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