Marvel Studios is struggling to find an actor to play the most powerful supervillain (and hero) of its upcoming Phase Five, but it’s going to give it yet another try. This time around, Top Gun: Maverick (2022) star Lewis Pullman is being considered.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lewis Pullman currently has been offered the role of Robert Reynolds, AKA the Sentry, in the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movie Thunderbolts. While there are few details of the plot of Thunderbolts currently available, it seems that the MCU’s premiere group of anti-heroes/semi-redeemed villains will clash with the Sentry at some point.
Unusually, Marvel seems to be scrambling to fill the role of Robert Reynolds. It was previously announced that Steven Yeun would play the character, who is a relatively new character in Marvel Comics continuity, but an enormously important and pivotal one for the modern era.

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However, Steven Yeun stepped away from the role, explaining, “I think for me, time passing and things shifting kind of pulled me out of it. But [director] Jake [Schreier], I know, is going to do an incredible job. It took a lot of drafts on email to make sure that I conveyed the sincerity of how sorry I was to have to back out.”
After Steven Yeun passed, the role of Robert Reynolds was reportedly offered to Euphoria star Austin Abrams, who apparently passed. Now, Lewis Pullman is the next candidate. The actor is best known for his role in the Tom Cruise blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick (in which he coincidentally played another character named Robert) and co-starred with current MCU star Brie Larson in the Apple TV series Lessons in Chemistry.

It will have to remain to be seen whether or not Lewis Pullman takes the role, but it is striking that Marvel Studios seems publically unable to cast the role of the Sentry. In Marvel Comics, the character (Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee) is something of an analog to DC’s Superman, an incredibly powerful beacon of good and justice; however, this character is also inextricably bonded to a malevolent, equally powerful entity known as the Void that counterbalances his heroism.
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After years of box office dominance, Marvel Studios has recently stumbled with a series of flops, which makes movies like Thunderbolts and the upcoming Deadpool 3 incredibly important for the survival of the franchise. While fans have high hopes for both movies, it’s not a great sign that the former can’t even get its casting straight.

Thunderbolts is confirmed to star Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, and Olga Kurylenko. It is currently scheduled to be released in July 2025.
Who do you think could play the Sentry? Let’s hear your casting ideas in the comments below!