You’d be forgiven for thinking The Marvels has two post-credits teasers. One of its stingers plays out mid-credits as usual, but the other is actually its final scene, which unfolds separately from the movie’s space-set story and sets up Marvel’s Earth-bound future. It wouldn’t be the first time a Marvel movie has ended this way. Back in 2008, The Incredible Hulk followed its climactic shot of Bruce Banner controlling his powers with a cameo appearance from Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), who claimed to be “putting together a team,” promising a movie crossover before it was common.
The final scene of The Marvels does something similar, in tongue-in-cheek fashion, and hints at major developments down the line, some of which can be divined from the pages of Marvel Comics.
In the climax, after Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) ends up in an alternate reality, Avenger Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) moves teen superhero Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani) and her family into Monica’s Louisiana home, since their house in Jersey City was destroyed by alien shenanigans. Here, Carol and Kamala commiserate over their friend’s disappearance, and agree that the three of them made a good team. This sparks an idea that Kamala is about to float Carol’s way, when the movie hard cuts to its closing sequence so we can see her plan in action.
In New York City, the young archer Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) — Hawkeye’s protégé, also code-named Hawkeye, seen in the Disney+ series Hawkeye — sneaks back into her apartment, bow and quiver in hand, and greets her one-eyed canine, Pizza Dog (named as such because he loves a good New York slice). She sees a figure lurking in the darkness and, thankfully, doesn’t immediately decorate this intruder with lethal arrows. It turns out to be Kamala, dressed in her best “Captain America in disguise” disguise, i.e. a low-brimmed baseball cap. Like us, she’s clearly watched the other Marvel films.
She delivers a sales pitch much like the one Nick Fury did after the credits of the original Iron Man, asking Kate if she thinks she’s “the only kid superhero in the world” (to which Kate sharply responds: “I’m 23”). “You’ve just become part of a much larger universe,” she tells Kate — just as Fury once told Stark — before dropping a hint that she also plans to recruit Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton), Ant-Man’s daughter. There’s no logical reason Kamala would know that line, but it’s silly enough (and delivered with enough “aww, shucks” charm by Vellani) that you can sort of forgive it.
This scene marks Marvel’s first step towards bringing together the Young Avengers, who formed in the Avengers’ absence in 2005 after a comics storyline titled Avengers: Disassembled. It doesn’t quite make sense for Kamala to put together a replacement or junior team when Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and the actual Avengers are still out and about, but a fair amount of groundwork has already been laid for them throughout the MCU. In the comics, the Young Avengers’ first big villain was Kang the Conqueror, who’s slowly working his way up to being a Thanos-level Big Bad in the movies and TV shows. And there are other B-tier superhero kiddos running around, in addition to Kamala, Kate and Cassie.
The two best-known versions of the Young Avengers team were created by Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung in 2005, and Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie in 2011. Since Kamala wasn’t around in the comics until 2014, she’s never actually been a member, though she was part of a similar teen hero squad known as the Champions alongside Miles Morales, the comics’ younger Spider-Man. Kate and Cassie (the latter goes by Stature in the comics) were part of the 2005 squad, as was Eli Bradley (Elijah Richardson), a character briefly glimpsed in the TV show The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. The grandson of super soldier Isiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), Eli inherited his grandfather’s powers and took on the Captain America-esque mantle of Patriot.
Wanda and Vision’s kids from WandaVision are also Young Avengers in the comics. Billy (Julian Hilliard) is Wiccan, who has his mother’s hex powers, while Tommy (Jett Klyne) is Speed, a speedster like his uncle Quicksilver/Pietro. We briefly saw them use these powers on the show, and while they were erased from existence by the end, we also know — thanks to their appearance in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — that there are infinite versions of them elsewhere in the cosmos, so they shouldn’t be too hard to recruit.
Rounding out the first round members with something of an MCU presence is the high-tech hero Iron Lad, who we haven’t technically met yet. He’s a younger Kang who travels back in time and recruits the Young Avengers to stop his older self from going on a conquering spree. Since we’ve met at least one Kang “variant” who proves they aren’t all bad (Loki’s Victor Timely), Iron Lad showing up on the timeline is just a matter of… well, you know.
The only original member with no MCU footprint whatsoever thus far is Hulkling, who isn’t actually related to the Hulk. Rather, he’s a half-Kree, half-Skrull shapeshifter, and the son of the original Captain Marvel, Mar-Vell. It’s possible that the MCU’s version of Mar-Vell (Annette Bening) had a secret Skrull affair and a child we didn’t know about, but Hulking’s absence is especially unfortunate since he also happens to be Billy’s boyfriend. In the Marvel movies, queerness is generally relegated to rock monster backstories or director cameos, so we may not see him show up anytime soon.
The team’s second iteration in Gillen and McKelvie’s 2011 comics is even more queer. In addition to Kate, Billy, Tommy and Hulkling, you have Miss America, who we’ve already been introduced to in the movies: America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), who could be seen universe-hopping alongside Doctor Strange in Multiverse of Madness. She’s a lesbian in the comics, and while the movies haven’t touched on her sexuality so far, they did allude to her being raised by two moms. And finally, you have Prodigy, an openly bisexual mutant who possesses super-duper-knowledge (a technical term), and who ends up becoming Speed’s boyfriend down the line. But like Hulkling, there’s no sign of him just yet.
Regardless of who does or does not end up represented (it’s Disney; we know better than to hope for too much), the Young Avengers are a failsafe for when the adult Avengers fail or disband. And while this already kind of, sort of happened in Captain America: Civil War, there’s every chance the team will be torn apart yet again by one or more Kangs the Conqueror — at which point we’ll all rightly applaud overeager fangirl Kamala for taking the initiative.
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