We may have to wait a few more years to see the new iteration of the Avengers, but that’s nothing compared to the anticipation for Marvel’s next generation of superheroes. Fans have been holding out for the arrival of a beloved super-team, the Young Avengers, for what’s felt like ages now. And Marvel certainly isn’t ignorant to that anticipation: Recent Marvel projects have been hard at work introducing prospective members, from Hawkeye’s Kate Bishop to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s Eli Bradley. A new attraction on Disney’s latest cruise ship, the Treasure, is even teasing a future team-up between young heroes like Cassie Lang, America Chavez, and Riri Williams. And perhaps most crucially, Ms. Marvel was last seen recruiting members for a new superhero group.
Marvel’s Cinematic Universe is clearly ready to introduce the Young Avengers in earnest. There’s just one problem: not all of those aforementioned heroes belong on the Young Avengers team.
The Young Avengers are a popular group within Marvel comics, initially designed to spotlight the new wave of Avengers sidekicks. Many of the members serve as “successors” to well-known Marvel heroes, but it’s important to note that they’re not the only next-gen team kicking around in the Marvel Universe. While the Young Avengers are a sanctioned off-shoot of the traditional Avengers, there are also groups like the Champions, who made the conscious choice to stand apart.
The Champions’ founding members — Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan), Spider-Man (Miles Morales), and Nova (Sam Alexander) — were once members of the “new” Avengers, fighting alongside seasoned heroes like Captain America and Iron Man. After the events of Civil War II, however, Ms. Marvel became disillusioned with the Avengers and their disregard for collateral damage. She set out to form a new team with the goal of actually changing the world, not just saving it.
“We wanted these kids to see themselves as agents of change,” writer Mark Waid told Inverse in 2023. “There were plenty of other super groups out there whose job was to fight the Toad and Mr. Hyde and Magneto. We wanted them to have a distinct goal, and social change was right there in front of us.”
The Champion’s early missions were a refreshing alternative to the ambitious, often mystic, scope of the Young Avengers storylines. Where the latter team isn’t often concerned with legacy, the Champions actively confront what it means to be a hero in a shifting world. They brought something new and much-needed to the Marvel Universe — and though members of the Champions already exist in the MCU, there’s a sense that they’ll be joining the Young Avengers rather than forming their own team.
After The Marvels, Kamala Khan has been positioned as a potential leader of the Young Avengers. That’s not too dissimilar to her arc in the comics, and it makes sense that she’d be forming her own group sooner than later. Still, relegating her to the Young Avengers and not the Champions just feels like a mistake. The two teams aren’t interchangeable, and slotting certain characters into the prospective line-up (like Riri Williams, a longtime member of the Champions) just feels disingenuous. Not only could Marvel be wasting an opportunity to introduce some true tension to Kamala’s superhero journey, but it could be abandoning a major aspect of films like Avengers: Age of Ultron or Captain America: Civil War, which constantly interrogated the Avengers and their legacy.
It may be too soon to express concern about Marvel’s future plans, especially since the studio hasn’t made an official announcement about Young Avengers or Champions. That said, conflating the two groups isn’t a great strategy. They’re two sides of one coin, and there’s no reason they can’t both exist in the MCU.
