Steven Yeun was meant to debut as Sentry in the upcoming Marvel film Thunderbolts. While the confirmation of his role ended up coming from Robert Kirkman talking about Yeun’s costume, not an official announcement, we now have lost all hope of seeing the Beef star of being our Robert Reynolds.
Yeun, who has starred in things like The Walking Dead and Minari and voices Mark Grayson in the hit Amazon Prime series Invincible, has now talked to Variety about his departure from the film. Making it very clear that it wasn’t an easy choice to make, Yeun said, “It took a lot of drafts on email to make sure that I conveyed sincerity of how sorry I was to have to back out.”
One of the reasons that Yeun stated for his departure was the shifting schedule for Thunderbolts. Originally scheduled for a summer 2024 release, it’s now supposedly happening in July of 2025. Part of the reasoning for the shift was due to production delays while the WGA and SAG-AFTRA were on strike. “I think for me, time passing and things shifting kind of pulled me out of it,” Yeun explained. “But [director] Jake [Schreier], I know, is going to do an incredible job.”
That doesn’t mean that Yeun has written off being in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though. “I wanna do a Marvel movie,” he said and went on to talk about how he still has ideas for who he could play but isn’t sharing. “I think it’s too early to say that,” Yeun said, when asked what other Marvel project he would like to join. “I probably pissed off too many people leaving, so I’m just gonna say, ‘Thank you for having me.’ I have some ideas. But I heard if you put it out there, you’ll never get it, so I’ll keep it close to my chest.”
We could have had it all
As always, it was the greed of the studios and producers at the time of the strikes that kept good things from happening for us all (but most importantly for the writers and actors struggling for their own wellbeing). The delays took Yeun out of the MCU for now, and that’s upsetting! His take on Sentry was a very exciting aspect of Thunderbolts for many fans.
As a Yelena Belova fan, I’m beyond excited to see my girl take on a movie like Thunderbolts. Having her square off with Sentry? That was a huge draw for me, especially if it meant having Florence Pugh and Steven Yeun acting opposite each other.
The movie itself is a bit of a mystery outside of the cast, and while that’s okay, knowing that we were going to get an introduction to Sentry in the movie was a definite highlight for fans of Marvel. What this means for the casting of Sentry, we don’t know. Whether or not this will delay the movie again is another conversation, but for now, it is still on track for its 2025 release date—just without Yeun as part of its cast.
(featured image: Universal Pictures)
