Bucky Barnes and Yelena Belova team up as the Winter Soldier and Black Widow in new Thunderbolts* art, which also addresses a huge MCU Phase 4 plot hole. Sebastian Stan and Florence Pugh were confirmed to be reprising their MCU roles in Marvel Studios’ upcoming Thunderbolts* back in 2022, and they’ll be joined by David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, Olga Kurylenko, Hannah John-Kamen and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, all returning from previous projects. Bucky Barnes’ Winter Soldier and Yelena Belova’s Black Widow have been teased to be leaders of the MCU’s Thunderbolts team, though it’s still unclear exactly what story Thunderbolts* will explore.

The MCU’s Phase 4 marked a huge change for both Bucky Barnes and Yelena Belova, as Barnes became a bona fide hero in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Belova broke free from the Red Room’s control in Black Widow. Bucky Barnes and Yelena Belova’s strength and determination has now been imagined in brilliant fan art shared by 70.6ix, depicting the pair battling together in Thunderbolts*.

The art shows Bucky Barnes and Yelena Belova fighting on the Celestial Tiamut, who rose from beneath the Earth’s surface in Eternals, suggesting Thunderbolts* could finally address one of the MCU’s biggest mysteries.

Why Thunderbolts* Might Finally Address Eternal’s Celestial Plot Hole

2021’s Eternals is one of the MCU’s most divisive projects, having received some criticism at the time of release, but becoming more popular in retrospect. Because of its mixed reception, the events of Eternals have seldom been mentioned in subsequent projects, but this has left glaring plot holes that Marvel Studios must address. Most notably, Eternals featured the emergence of the Celestial Tiamut from within the Earth. Tiamut was turned to a stone-like substance by the Eternals, but this left a giant statue of the Celestial jutting out from the ocean that has only been mentioned in one project since.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law included several brilliant Easter eggs, cementing it firmly in the world of the MCU. One of these included a brief news headline on a website being browsed by Jennifer Walters, which read, “Why there is a giant statue of a man sticking out of the ocean.”Something of the magnitude of Tiamut’s emergence must have been global news, so it’s unusual that it hasn’t been addressed more directly since Eternals, but speculation suggests that Thunderbolts* will change this. This is based on a popular theory that the Eternals may have actually transformed Tiamut’s body into adamantium.

Adamantium is famously known as the metal bonded to Wolverine’s skeleton in Marvel Comics, so revealing the Celestial Tiamut to now be formed of adamantium would help to set up the X-Men’s highly-anticipated MCU debut. This also plays perfectly into Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine’s mission in the MCU, as Black Panther: Wakanda Forever revealed she wanted to acquire vibranium, a coveted resource, but her sights could turn to adamantium in Thunderbolts*. The race for these coveted materials is expected to be key to both Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts*, so Eternals’ biggest mystery might finally be solved.