This is beginning to look like the year of the Young Avengers — even though the Marvel superhero team hasn’t appeared in comics regularly since 2014. On Monday, it was revealed that Marvel is in early talks with Hailee Steinfeld to star as Kate Bishop in the upcoming Disney+ Hawkeye series. This makes her just one of several characters from the team being set up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But for the unfamiliar, who are the Young Avengers?
The Young Avengers debuted in the first issue of their eponymous comic book series in 2005. The title — launched as part of an attempt to revitalize a significant chunk of Marvel’s publishing line, alongside The New Avengers, Iron Manand Captain America — offered a lineup of all-new characters with connections to existing Marvel heroes and mythology, brought together by circumstance much as their adult inspirations had been, years earlier.
Young Avengers to Return in 2020: WATCH
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It looks like we’ll get the return of the Young Avengers next year, possibly both in print and on TV.
Bleeding Cool reported this week that although it “was promised last year. Marvel Comics #1000 initially had a much greater tease for a new Young Avengers series, but that was edited back before publication. But now we hear that yes, Marvel Comics is planning to publish a new Young Avengers series next year. Just don’t expect Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung, there’s a brand new creative team lined up – I don’t know who but I’m told to expect good things, and a bit of an impact on announcement.”
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I’m also told that the Champions will be retired without relaunch, but that Young Avengers may see some of the former champions join the team. Viv Vision and Ironheart are favourites for that as they mirror members of the Avengers…
Here’s how they were looking for Marvel Comics #1000…. now, was that Wiccan and Hulking getting married? Enquiring minds… enquire.
Meanwhile CBR said, “Marvel is reportedly developing a TV series based on the Young Avengers.
SuperBroMovies‘ Daniel Richtman claims Marvel is “developing a Young Avengers/Champions show for Disney+. A movie is possible but I hear they really want it to be a limited series.”
So either way we get more of our fave super couple: Hulkling and Wiccan!
They haven’t had their own comic in five years, but members of the superteam are making their way into the MCU.
In the background, though, is the fact that Marvel Studios seems to quietly be leading up to a potential Young Avengersproject of some sort. (Since their debut, Wiccan and Hulkling have been a couple.)
If Steinfeld appears as Kate Bishop in the upcoming Disney+ Hawkeyeseries, she would be the second Young Avengers member to appear in the MCU, with Cassie Lang having appeared in both Ant-Man movies to date and, thanks to the time jump in Avengers: Endgame now being a teenager played by Emma Fuhrmann — just the right age for her to become Stature, should the need arise.
Beyond that, the WandaVision Disney+ show would be the perfect opportunity to introduce Wiccan and his brother — if Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch is, as rumored, attempting to create some vision (no pun intended) of domestic bliss, wouldn’t twins be the ideal addition?
Hulkling, too, is strangely primed for an appearance; as Captain Marveland Spider-Man: Far From Home revealed, the conflict between the Kree and the Skrulls is apparently going to play a part in the MCU going forward, making a Kree/Skrull hybrid child seem all the more narratively important in the grand scheme of things.
Will the Young Avengers prove to be the stealth story behind Marvel’s Phase 4 plans and beyond, in the same way that Thanos and the Infinity Stones played out in the background of Phases 1 through 3? Perhaps so, perhaps not. But it’s worth considering that the MCU is currently without a team of Avengers in the wake of Avengers: Endgame. If a new team was going to form to fill the gap…shouldn’t it feature some younger heroes…?
