[Warning: This article contains Thunderbolts* spoilers.] “Welcome to the Watchtower.” With those four words, Thunderbolts* reveals shadowy CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) to be the new owner of Avengers Tower, the Tony Stark-financed skyscraper that was briefly home to Earth’s mightiest heroes (from 2012’s The Avengers to 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming). The building was mid-renovation when de Fontaine’s Sentry Project was shut down, and is only 70% complete by the time she has Bob Reynolds (Lewis Pullman) step out as her golden guardian of good: The Sentry.
Described as “all-powerful, invincible, stronger than all the Avengers combined into one — and soon to be known as Earth’s mightiest hero,” the classic, gold-clad superhero is to be based out of the Watchtower. “I mean, the place wasn’t cheap, but it has good optics,” de Fontaine tells the Thunderbolts*, the team of “disposable delinquents” assembled to bring down the woman who says Sentry will make her unstoppable and unimpeachable: Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen), and Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour).
RELATED: How Did the Thunderbolts Get Their Name in the Comics?
But like the eponymous heroes, the Watchtower comes with an asterisk: by the film’s end, de Fontaine announces the six heroes as the New Avengers (which means it’s technically the new Avengers Tower). 14 months later, in a post-credits scene, it’s there that the New Avengers receive an alert that a foreign object has entered the atmosphere: a space ship emblazoned with a “4” symbol.
Like its counterpart in the New Avengers comic run, Stark Tower (a.k.a. Avengers Tower) became the base of Sentry’s Watchtower where his alter-ego, Bob, contained himself to protect the world from his dark side: the Void. But in the comics, the original Thunderbolts — supervillains masquerading as heroes in the absence of Earth’s mightiest heroes, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four — didn’t operate out of Avengers Tower, but Midtown’s Four Freedoms Plaza.
After their original headquarters the Baxter Building was destroyed, the Fantastic Four constructed Four Freedoms Plaza in its place in Midtown Manhattan. The building that housed the Fantastic Four was left vacant after Mister Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch, and the Thing appeared to perish after sacrificing themselves alongside the Avengers to save the world from the villain Onslaught.
In 1997’s Thunderbolts #2, the T-bolts’ battle with the Mad Thinker’s Awesome Android ended at the partial ruins of Four Freedoms Plaza, where Citizen V (Baron Helmut Zemo), Songbird (Screaming Mimi), Techno (the Fixer), Meteorite (Moonstone), MACH-1 (Beetle), and Atlas (Goliath) rescued a young Franklin Richards. The Mayor of New York City then offered the Thunderbolts the opportunity to take up residence in the former headquarters of the Fantastic Four.
Four Freedoms Plaza’s giant “4” was replaced with a Thunderbolt, and in Thunderbolts #3, the Thunderbolts base was still under construction and surrounded by scaffolding and cranes — similar to how Avengers Tower appears in Thunderbolts*/The New Avengers.
Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts* is now playing only in theaters, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps hits theaters on July 25.
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