Despite its disappointing box office, The Marvels has done a lot right, including establishing the foundation for the Young Avengers. The tease is one of two post-credits scenes in the movie and arguably the more exciting (we already knew the X-Men were coming, after all).
After the villain has been defeated and the day has been saved, as per the typical format of an MCU movie, fans were treated to our new favorite Marvel character, Kamala Khan, linking up with Hawkeye’s apprentice, Kate Bishop, to tell her that she intends to assemble a team of fresh, young superheroes. If you’ve rewatched the Marvel movies in order recently, you’ll immediately recognize it as a direct nod to Iron Man and Nick Fury’s recruitment of Tony Stark.
The prospect of a new team of younger, more enthusiastic Avengers is thrilling enough, and the big question is: who will be in the rest of the squad? According to Vellani, speaking with SlashFilm, the new movie nearly told us. “There was another version where — does [it] matter if I say it? There were more characters in it. I will not say which characters, but there were more characters.”
She continued, “So yeah, [the post-credit scene] changed a couple times. And I think what it ended up being, I think just Kamala and Kate Bishop is honestly perfect…I would be very excited if I ever got to work with her on a legitimate movie after this.”
While there’s nothing on the cards currently for Marvel’s Phase 5 or Phase 6, it looks like Vellani will almost certainly get her wish at some point, with the film directly setting up the Young Avengers. The team has well-established roots in Marvel comics and is surely too much of a golden opportunity for Kevin Feige to pass up, especially with talent such as The Marvels cast star Vellani and Hailee Steinfeld as bow-and-arrow-ace Kate Bishop.
So, with all the planning that goes into the MCU, the chances of this tease going unfulfilled are almost zero, and an upcoming Marvel movie with the Young Avengers as the headline act seems inevitable. That’s extremely exciting news, but it still doesn’t answer our question, and the fact that The Marvels nearly featured more characters in the set-up just leaves us feeling even more intrigued.
Thankfully, we’re Marvel experts here at The Digital Fix, and we think we’ve pieced together exactly who this new team is going to be comprised of.
Obviously, you have Cassie Lang, Ant-Man’s adventure-prone daughter. She’s even mentioned in the scene, so she’s locked in. Then, there’s Doctor Strange’s multiverse-hopping protege America Chavez. With her harnessing of extra-dimensional power, she’d bring some much-needed magical flare to the team. Speaking of magical flair, we have Wiccan.
Wiccan, whose real name is Billy Maximoff (yes, the son of Scarlett Witch), looks set to be introduced in the upcoming Disney Plus series Agatha: Darkhold Diaries, according to rumors and images from filming. Like his mother, he’s a powerful warlock and has a history with the Young Avengers in the comics. It looks like Heartstopper’s Joe Locke could be bringing him to life in the series, and like Kamala and Kate, his introduction to the franchise will be via TV screens.
So there we have it. Five names who look set to be the MCU’s Young Avengers. It’s a pretty well-rounded team, wouldn’t you say? Confirmation may be a few years off yet, and it took four years for the first Avengers movie to arrive after Iron Man. Hopefully, then, we could have the team hitting the big screen around 2027.
For more Marvel magic, read our The Marvels review and check out our picks for the best Marvel villains, as well as our guides to Deadpool 3 and the Agatha Darkhold Diaries release date. Or, go beyond superheroes to see our list of the best movies of all time.