There are a lot of takeaways from Thunderbolts* — sorry, *The New Avengers, as spoiled by Marvel Studios itself, so you legally can’t get mad at me. But there are no greater injustices (like lightning) in the movie than, and actual spoiler warning here, the death of Taskmaster, aka Antonia Dreykov (Olga Kurylenko). And frankly, while we’re at it, what is Marvel’s whole deal with Taskmaster, anyway, a character that was radically changed for Black Widow, and then eliminated quickly in Thunderbolts*?
To recap briefly, Taskmaster was introduced in the 2021 film as an emotionless, nearly silent assassin controlled by her father, General Dreykov (Ray Winstone). Thanks to a chip in her brain and some Red Room training, she was able to mimic her opponent’s movements, as well as use moves observed from other heroes. It was a riff on the character’s comic book origins, which gave him similar abilities, though with a skull mask and a much chattier demeanor. While some fans theorized the skull mask was excised because skeletons can’t be shown in China… That’s not exactly true. They can be shown. So if anything, it was an aesthetic choice that eliminated one of the more prominent features of the character’s costume. It’s sort of like if The Punisher (Jon Bernthal) had a blob on his chest, instead of a skull.
But whatever, no biggie. Black Widow was a solid movie, and gave a setup not just for Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) to flourish in the MCU, but also the possibility that Taskmaster could get a second life in the franchise.
LOL. As if. Gotcha, you rubes.
In Thunderbolts*, Taskmaster is one of the black ops operatives working for Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), alongside Yelena, John Walker (Wyatt Russell), and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen). But when the four of them are locked in a vault (alongside Lewis Pullman’s Bob) in a fight to the death… Well, only Taskmaster dies. She’s shot in the head by Ghost. And other than John and Ghost robbing her body, her getting incinerated, and a quick question to Yelena about her (“she had a hard life,” Yelena notes wistfully), that’s it for Taskmaster.
Taskmaster’s Death In Thunderbolts* Doesn’t Raise The Stakes, But Does Drive Home An Emotional Point
So why did Taskmaster die in Thunderbolts*? The easy answer is “to raise the stakes.” Except nobody else dies in the movie after that point (other than some random soldiers), including any other member of the team, or any of the people in New York City who are getting turned into black smears by The Void (also Pullman). So Taskmaster’s death does not, in fact, raise the stakes, so much as get her out of the way so everyone else can move on with the story.
There is a better argument to be made that Taskmaster’s off-hand death is part of the point. All of these characters feel their own lives are worthless. They don’t want to die, necessarily, but as Yelena explains right after touching on Taskmaster’s brief, painful life, this is what’s waiting for all of them… A death that ultimately doesn’t mean that much.
Except because of that… Taskmaster’s death doesn’t mean that much. Perhaps if it had — sorry for the pun — haunted Ghost in some way, or been used as a rallying cry a la Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) in the first Avengers movie, Taskmaster dying would have made more of an impact. Instead, she’s there, she’s gone, they move on.
The funny part is, it almost wasn’t that way. At all.
Taskmaster’s Arc, At One Point, Lasted The Whole Movie
In a surprisingly open interview with co-screenwriter Eric Pearson, Polygon revealed that one of his drafts of the movie had Taskmaster living through the vault fight — something he didn’t find out was gone until he watched the movie. “When I sat down to watch the first cut, one thing was totally different and shocked the hell out of me, and it was that,” Pearson said. “Everything else, I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s the movie that I wrote!’ But that decision…”
Don’t worry, Pearson — who also wrote Black Widow — isn’t throwing his employers under the bus or anything. Like we noted above, though he didn’t have any insight into why the decision was made, since it was under co-writer Joanna Calo’s purview, he theorized it was likely to raise the stakes of the movie as quickly as possible.
But Pearson also reveals what his original plans were for Taskmaster, and… They sound like they could have improved certain aspects of the movie dramatically? First, rather than Ghost killing Taskmaster, their two plot lines were tied together. Ghost, like Taskmaster, was experimented on in a lab from a young age. And with Ghost having lived free for longer, would have formed a big sister bond with Taskmaster, helping her learn autonomy. Given Ghost is the character with the least to do in the movie — and a nearly non-existent emotional arc — it makes a sort of sense that eliminating Taskmaster eliminated her plot, too.
Not only that, but Pearson reveals the team’s whole “my tragedy is worse than your tragedy” game would always be trumped by Taskmaster, who had it worse than all of them. And an extremely funny-sounding bit got cut too, which would have found Taskmaster’s memory constantly resetting, and her trying to kill John Walker repeatedly in the middle of other scenes.
“They would be discussing the plan of how to get out [of the vault], and she’d just go after him again,” Pearson recalled, “and they’d all have to pig-pile on each other, and pull her off, and be like, ‘No, we know each other! We’ve had this conversation before!’”
As Pearson explains, that too seems to have been shunted onto another character. In this case, Bob, who has memory problems in the movie you see in theaters. But it’s hard not to think that giving that back to Taskmaster wouldn’t have cost too much, given there’s already so much going on with Bob. And having Taskmaster’s running bit with John Walker, and a relationship with Ghost would have helped flesh out both of those characters, as well.
But the movie is the movie, and Taskmaster’s arc is what it is.
The Death Of Taskmaster Means We’ll Never See Her — I Am A Professional Writer — Be Cool
But to get back to the comics, there is also something to be said about how Marvel seems allergic to characters whose powers are mimicry. Taskmaster gets changed dramatically and is killed quickly. Echo (Alaqua Cox) in the series Echo also eschewed her powers of mimicry in the comics — you know, why she’s called Echo? — in the TV show. And we’ve yet to see how Jeanne Foucault, aka the daughter of Taskmaster called Finesse, gets utilized on Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. But now mimicry as of yet.
The character, to use blunt, simple language, is cool in the comics. By killing off Taskmaster here, you do not allow her the possibility of being cool. I kept waiting for her to jump up alive (after all, she is a cyborg and could potentially recover from a bullet to the brain), or to have somehow survived the incinerator. Instead, everyone gets to enjoy their lives as The New Avengers (or Avengerz) and battle Doctor Doom (Robert Downey Jr.) in superhero mash-up Avengers: Doomsday. Meanwhile, poor Taskmaster is a pile of ash in a forgotten mountain in the middle of nowhere. Justice for Antonia Dreykov. Like lightning.
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Black Widow was a solid movie? It was mediocre at it best, personally, I’d say it was lower than mid and even fans of the film admitted that villain was the weakest part. I agree that they could at least provide Antonia some arc or kill her in more epic way, but overall it was whacky parody of original character, as Antonia had no charisma of Taskmaster and her skills came from technology. Fakemaster is dead. Oh no!… Anyway. I hope someday we’ll have a proper adaptation of one of the coolest mercenaries from Marvel.