According to new reports, Marvel’s Thunderbolts is set to bring back two mentor figures into the MCU. While Laurence Fishburne’s Bill Foster will return from Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Rachel Weisz is also set to play Melina Vostokoff from Black Widow. Weisz’s character was shown to share a motherly bond with Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha and Florence Pugh’s Yelena. However, Black Widow explored very little of the character’s powers when compared to the comics.
In Marvel Comics, Melina Vostokoff is a supervillain, Iron Maiden, who completed the Red Room training. Fans got to see Weisz play the villainous side of Melina, in a voice role capacity, in the second season of What If…?.
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Rachel Weisz’s Melina Vostokoff Reportedly Returning In Thunderbolts
Marvel’s upcoming film, Thunderbolts, will see the unconventional team-up of a bunch of anti-heroes or reformed villains, who will undertake dangerous missions for the government. Interestingly, the group will reunite Yelena Belova with Alexei Shostakov, the supposed daughter-father duo from Black Widow, played by Florence Pugh and David Harbour. New reports suggest that the motherly figure Melina, played by Rachel Weisz, will also return to this film.
According to a scoop by Production Weekly, both Melina Vostokoff and Laurence Fishburne‘s Bill Foster will appear in Thunderbolts (via The Trail Blazer). Fans expect both of these characters to finally suit up in the film, as the previous films did not explore their alternate identities from the comic books. Bill Foster is the size-changing Goliath, whereas Melina is the supervillain Iron Maiden in the comics.
In Black Widow, Melina and Alexei posed as a couple and lived in Ohio for years, with Natasha and Yelena as their pretend children. The mission was ordered by General Dreykov, the leader of the Red Room, who trained young girls and women as assassins after controlling their minds. The makeshift family comes together 21 years later to destroy the Red Room once and for all.
When the fans last saw the live-action Melina, she was treading the good guy path. However, the comic book version was not so nice to Scarlett Johansson‘s Natasha. In fact, she was Black Widow’s one of the biggest adversaries. She was jealous of Natasha during her espionage days, as Melina always lived under her shadow. Iron Maiden was one of the assassins sent to kill Natasha when she defected.
The reported addition of Bill Foster and Melina in the film, however, points to Marvel continuing to explore the dysfunctional family dynamics between the characters.
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Will Thunderbolts Explore the Comic Accurate Powers Of Iron Maiden?
In the comics, Melina Vostokovna is a Russian spy and a Red Room scientist. She later turns into a freelance assassin, with the primary goal of eliminating Black Widow. In the comics, she joins several villainous teams before being captured and coerced into joining the Thunderbolts during the Civil War comic series.
While Iron Maiden is a trained assassin and a master martial artist, her superpower comes from the strong metal suit. The suit is a lightweight silver exoskeleton that protects her from impacts, bullets, and even energy weapons. Besides avoiding any penetrating injury, the flexible suit also enhances her strength and durability. Fans will have to wait to see if Thunderbolts will explore the full potential of the character.
Reports indicate that the production for the MCU film will begin in March. The Jake Schreier-directed film is currently expected to be released in theaters on July 25, 2025.
