Marvel's phase 4 is the perfect set up to introduce the Young Avengers to the big screen
‘Avengers: Endgame’ may have been the end of the road to everybody’s favorite iteration of the superhero team but that doesn’t mean there won’t be any more 'Avengers' movies in the future of Marvel. After all, the Avengers name is a legacy that can’t just die out, both in real life and in the fictional world.
During an interview with MTV News, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige revealed the next ‘Avengers’ movie, slated to be a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) Phase 5, will feature brand new characters we’ve never seen before.
“It will be a very different team than we’ve seen before, that’s what 'Avengers: Endgame' was all about,” said Feige. “It will be a very different incarnation of the team with some people you’ve already met and some people you haven’t met yet.”
We can probably assume the familiar faces he’s alluding to are characters like Captain Marvel, Thor, and Black-Panther, all of whom have their own movies coming out in Marvel’s fourth and fifth phases. That said, we can’t help wondering who the new members could be and there’s a very good chance we may have some hints in the line-up for Phase 4.
In the comics, a group of superpowered youngsters came together after the main Avengers team disbanded and formed the ever-popular ‘Young Avengers’ team. Some of these heroes like Hulkling and Wiccan were children of Avengers members while others, like Iron Lad, had a more complicated connection to "Earth’s Mightiest Heroes."
We’ve already met one of the Young Avengers - Cassie Lang, the daughter of Scott Lang aka Ant-Man (Paul Rudd). The five-year time jump in ‘Avengers: Endgame’ conveniently aged Cassie to her teens, putting her at the right age to become the size-changing hero and key Young Avengers member known as Stature.
Another member of the Young Avengers has already been confirmed to make an appearance during Phase 4. The ‘Hawkeye’ series on Disney+ will be introducing Kate Bishop, the resident archer of the Young Avengers and the protege of Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner).
That’s already two members of the team who we know for a fact will be part of MCU’s future but the other Disney+ shows coming up in Phase 4 could potentially introduce at least three more.
One of the most iconic members of the Young Avengers is Elijah Bradley aka Patriot. Anthony Mackie (Sam Wilson aka Falcon aka Captain America) has mentioned in the past that he would love to see the storyline ‘Truth: Red, White and Black’ adapted for the screen.
That particular story concerned a group of black soldiers during WWII who were used as test subjects in an attempt to recreate the Super Soldier serum used to make Captain America. The program yielded one stable subject, Eli’s grandfather Isaiah Bradley.
During a panel at Celebrity Fan Fest in San Antonio, Texas, Mackie said: “The best, for me — my favorite timeline of Sam Wilson is the Tuskegee airman experiment timeline. I think it’s very interesting to think they took these soldiers and tried out the serum on them before they injected Cap. It’s really, the way it was written is really beautiful and kind of describes America in a very specific way in that period and depicts it truly and honestly.”
That’s not necessarily confirmation that we’re going to see Patriot in ‘The Falcon and The Winter Soldier’ but one can hope. Two other characters that we can hope to see in Phase 4 are Wiccan and Speed, the children of Scarlet Witch and the Vision.
In the comics, these characters came into the world in a very roundabout way, first having been created by Wanda using her powers, then erased from existence and subsequently reincarnated as the children of different parents. Tommy Shepherd aka Speed inherited his uncle Quicksilver’s super-speed while Billy Kaplan aka Wiccan inherited his mother’s magical ability as well as the ability to conjure lightning.
Billy is basically like Scarlet Witch and Thor rolled into one and his relationship with his Young Avengers teammate Hulkling aka Teddy Altman is one of Marvel’s most popular romances. Again, these characters haven’t been confirmed yet but ‘WandaVision’ does seem to be weird enough to serve as an introduction to the twins and their extremely twisted history.
We won’t know for sure until Phase 4 begins with ‘Black Widow’ on May 1, 2020, but if Marvel is planning to bring the Young Avengers to the big screen, we’re all for it. Nobody deserves to inherit the legacy of the Avengers more than these plucky young heroes.