One of my favorite line readings of the year is Richard Linklater’s hitman, when Glen Powell’s character Gary is honest with Adria Arjona’s character Madison about how he’s pretending to be someone else. The moment is perfectly debunked by Arjona’s hilariously high-pitched “Who the How awful is GARY huh?!“ It’s deadly every time. I say all this to say that if you’ve watched the trailer for Marvel’s new movie, Lightning bolts*, then you may have reached the point where Lewis Pullman’s character “Bob” is introduced and you’re wondering, either to yourself or out loud, “Who is the to fuck is Bob?!” with a similar tenor and tone.

Dear reader, that’s a good question. Pullman is playing a character named Robert Reynolds, which means he’s most likely playing an MCU version of the Marvel hero known as The Sentry. Originally developed in the late ‘90s by Paul Jenkins and Rick Veitch before getting a miniseries from Jenkins in 2000 with art by Jae Lee, the character’s history is, even by comic book standards, a bizarrely long and winding road. The original series follows a middle-aged version of Bob who remembers that he was once a superhero named Sentry, who has the power of a million suns, given to him by taking a version of the super soldier serum. Fearing that his arch-nemesis “The Void” is returning, Bob seeks out other Marvel heroes to help him. Over the course of the series, it’s revealed that Sentry and Void are two sides of the same coin, manifestations of Bob’s anxiety and schizophrenia. Essentially, Bob is Marvel’s Superman, if Superman were also Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Of course, the Sentry had never appeared in a Marvel comic before the original Jenkins/Lee miniseries, but there is an explanation for why he appears seemingly out of nowhere; we learn that in order to protect the world from his dark side, Bob enlisted Dr. Strange and Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four to erase the world’s memory of him. That first series ends with him doing the same thing again, for the same reason. But comic books being comic books, it was only a matter of time before other writers found a reason to include Bob in their stories. Writer Brian Michael Bendis eventually used Sentry as a critical component of his Mighty Avengers story, where Tony Stark enlists his help in exchange for trying to find a cure for his mental health issues. From there, he becomes a regular fixture during Bendis’ Dark Avengers flight, where Norman Osborn convinces The Void to take over Bob and follow his orders.

Because Bob’s two personalities are constantly battling for control, he is often too dangerous to leave unchecked, and that is the element that Lightning bolts* seems to be playing out. When Yelena (Florence Pugh), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), and others encounter Bob in the trailer, he’s wearing what appears to be a doctor’s coat. While we don’t know who exactly is pulling the strings at this point, the initial implication is that Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Val has sent Yelena, Walker, and the other MCU antiheroes to either rescue Bob or challenge him so he’ll take them out for her. Either way, one of the most complex and complicated heroes in recent comic book history will be at the center of a major Marvel movie when Lightning bolts* will be released in May next year.