The Marvels just wrapped up an underwhelming weekend through, I would argue, no fault of its own. But it is an MCU project with some important implications, and you don’t get erased from canon just because you perform poorly. As such, there are a number of threads The Marvels opens that seem like they will be paying off later on.
To talk about this we’ll have to get into specific spoilers for The Marvels here, mainly the last scene in the whole movie that isn’t about the main story, but a tease of what may or may not be coming.
That would be the very funny moment where Kamala Khan channels Nick Fury and waits inside Kate Bishop’s New York apartment, recruiting her for her “Kid Superhero” team which is not yet called the Young Avengers, but that’s very much where we’re heading, and this is the first time the MCU has really acknowledged this is happening.
While younger heroes have begun to surface for years now, there is no actual Young Avengers project that’s been announced within the MCU, as the focus has been on Kang stuff or the Fantastic Four or X-Men integration. However, there are just too many candidates at this point for the Young Avengers cast, and now with The Marvels, that team is literally starting to form.
There is of course a list of comic candidates for various Young Avengers squads, some of which may overlap with the MCU, some of which may not. But I think we have a pretty good idea of the potential starting point for the initial batch. So, here we go:
Ms. Marvel – I mean, very obviously, and the MCU would be wise to use Iman Vellani as much as possible as this team evolves.
Kate Bishop – The first recruit, and thankfully we finally have an answer on when we’d see Hailee Steinfeld in the role again after her great turn in Hawkeye.
Cassie Lang/Stinger – Lang is mentioned by Kamala when she’s brainstorming about other people to recruit, remembering that Ant-Man has a daughter, who of course co-starred in the (not good) Quantumania.
Wiccan/Billy Maximoff – While we saw a very young version of the character in WandaVision, we know that Wiccan will now be played by Joe Locke in Agatha: Coven of Chaos, or whatever it’s called now. Joining him would be a possible older casting of his brother, Speed, and there are theories that Hulking, Wiccan’s eventual love interest, a Skrull-Kree hybrid, could show up in that show.
America Chavez – She’s young, she’s powerful, she was a big part of Multiverse of Madness, she’s an obvious candidate for the team.
Then, things get a bit muddy. Hulk showed up with a son with a bad haircut in She-Hulk. The idea that Iron Lad, a younger version of Kang the Conqueror, could appear soon makes sense given the Kang focus of this era. In Falcon and the Winter Soldier we meet Isaiah Bradley’s grandson who in the comics becomes Patriot. Thor ends up with a powerful daughter by the end of Love and Thunder. And while the correct age for the squad, it seems more likely that Tom Holland’s Peter Parker would remain in the “proper” Avengers rather than going down to the kids’ table. Though I’m pretty sure Kate Bishop is older than him.
Again, we have no announced Young Avengers project, not on film, not on Disney Plus. But this has to be happening given literally years of setup for a younger cast of heroes, and now The Marvels getting explicit with it. We’ll know more when Agatha hits, I believe, but we’ll see if Marvel announces anything before then.
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