The 'Young Avengers' Pieces Keep Falling In Place For The MCU

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So earlier this week, the Hawkeye trailer dropped. You missed it? Here:

It’s looking like Kate Bishop is getting integrated into the MCU. With her and several other young characters introduced in streaming shows and movies, Disney is likely going to massage the still-swelling teat of the MCU udder to squirt out some thick, creamy Young Avengers content.

Fans of the MCU movies and TV shows might be thinking that the Young Avengers are just the Tiny Toons/Muppet Babies of their grown-up counterparts, and … well, they’re only half right. For all we know, the characters that are/were Young Avengers in the comics might not be included in any MCU media. Or there won’t be any Young Avengers anything on Disney+ or in theaters at all. But speculating is typically fun in nerd culture, so why not include this in The Discourse™? 

So who are the Young Avengers that are currently incorporated in the MCU? 

Well, let’s start with Kate Bishop, a.k.a. Hawkeye, currently portrayed by an actor who seems to give a shit about being Hawkeye, Hailee Steinfield.

She’s the Hawkeye that’s going to be introduced in the upcoming Disney+ series. In the comics, she’s a rich kid with the same strengths, abilities, and deadshot aim as Clint Barton. Much like how Florence Pugh is replacing Scarlett Johannson as Black Widow (which, come to think of it, has enough of a babyface to maybe become a Young Avenger herself), it’s presumed that Steinfeld is going to be taking the Hawkeye mantle by the end of the Disney+ series as Jeremy Renner moves on from the MCU to make another app about himself or something.

Next, there’s Eli Bradley, known as Patriot in the comics, known to MCU fans as Isaiah Bradley’s grandson in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. 

In the comics, Isaiah claimed to have gotten his supersoldier-like powers from his grandfather, then admitted he actually got them through Mutant Growth Hormone, then got them from his grandfather for real via a blood transfusion. So if we get any version of that at all, it’ll likely be from the latter scenario for the sake of time and to leave mutants out of this whole thing unless X-Men mutant drama appears prior to any Young Avengering.

Then we have Stature, which is a boring name for a character that has Ant-Man’s tiny-to-giant powers. 

It’s Scott Lang’s kid, Cassie, originally played by Abby Ryder Fortson, last seen played by Emma Fuhrmann in Avengers: Endgame, and soon-to-be played by Kathryn Newton (Freaky, Detective Pikachu) in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. We’ve seen her grow up in the movies (well, after a time jump), so it’ll be likely she’d be included in the MCU version of the Young Avengers. Just give her access to Pym Particles, and boom, new heroine.

WandaVision introduced us to Wanda Maximoff’s twin sons that aren’t real but could be real and ... It’s just complicated, watch the show. The point is that in the comics those sons ended up being Speed and Wiccan, with one twin having Pietro Maximoff’s super-speed powers and the other having Wanda’s magic-wielding abilities. I let you guess which twin had which set of powers.

Since, according to the post-credits of WandaVision, Wanda seems to be on the hunt for them in some form or fashion, we may see some teen versions of them from an alternate dimension or timeline, their souls transported to the bodies of other boys, or some other comic book method to bring them back that Sam Raimi might need to explain in Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Speaking of that movie, Xochitl Gomez was cast as Young Avengers’ America Chavez for Multiverse of Madness. It's an appropriate debut since America can literally punch and kick star-holes into other dimensions!

Arguably, the most intriguing addition to the team could be Iron Lad. No, Tony Stark didn’t have a secret son (unless they retcon the origins of that one kid in Iron Man 3). In the comic books, Iron Lad was a younger version of this guy:

In the comics, Iron Lad was the person who brought the Young Avengers together to prevent himself from becoming the future version of himself, Kang the Conqueror. Having a young variant of He Who Remains as the person who brings together all of the young heroes to fight off against other eviler, more conquerorier versions of himself would fit within the next Phase of the MCU perfectly.

Having the MCU’s Young Avengers be linked to the Loki series also allows another Marvel Comics Young Avenger to emerge:

There are even more possibilities for Young Avengers members to appear in the MCU. The fact that Vision is sorta-kinda back from the events of WandaVision allows the possibility that a Vision with a teen robot body could appear. This would really allow Paul Bettany to flex his acting muscles and showcase his range by portraying a teen version of himself!

Please update this meme with Paul Bettany going forward, internet.

The existence of Skrulls and the Kree in the MCU also opens the door for Hulkling. If you are just an MCU fan that doesn’t really read comic books, Hulkling is not a young human that was irradiated to the point that he turns into an HGH-addicted rage monster with some teen angst thrown in. No, Hulkling is a half-Kree/half-Skrull shapeshifting heir to the Skrull empire. So why is he called “Hulkling”? Because that’s what he was initially drawn to look like, silly.

So yeah, there’s a good chance that some form of the Young Avengers will team up in the not-too-distant future, knowing Disney’s desire to keep the Marvel milk flowing to churn up more superhero ice cream for us to slurp. That said, let’s not get too hung up on what flavors of ice cream it will be or how it is prepared.

Top Image: Marvel Studios, Marvel Comics