‘Til she’s 90!’: A Marvel star who is Rotten Tomatoes gold dust is ready to chain themselves to the MCU forever, and we are 100% down

Allow me to set a scene for you. The year is 2024, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is quite blatantly building towards a Young Avengers project, and their latest release, Deadpool & Wolverine, is dominating the box office, featuring an actor whose superhero track record as pristine as you can ask from someone of their young age. I speak, of course, of Dafne Keen, who recently went on record to proclaim that she’d play X-23 for the rest of her life, which we, as it happens, would be all too happy to watch for the rest of our lives.

Speaking recently in an interview with Empire Magazine, the actress voiced her unfettered dedication to a never-ending supply of X-23, should the MCU take that route, and it didn’t take long for X to whip out the only Deadpool & Wolverine gag that such news could ever be met with.

Say what you will about how underutilized she was in Deadpool & Wolverine (a film that, as a whole, left a lot of storytelling to be desired), but Keen’s acclimation to playing an MCU mainstay character would be an exciting development. Her main role in the near-spotless Logan laid the foundational pillar for her Deadpool & Wolverine cameo, and the idea of Keen playing X-23 as the stoic, straight-man archetype to the franchise’s younger, cheekier heroes, would deepen the tone of this heavily-hinted Young Avengers project, and benefit the MCU as a whole.

For the moment, we can safely bet on Ms. Marvel, Kate Bishop, Cassie Lang, and possibly America Chavez to comprise the MCU’s Young Avengers roster, with Agatha All Along likely to set up Wiccan (sorry, “Teen”) and Hulkling (sorry, “Teen”‘s boyfriend), and Captain America: Brave New World possibly setting up Patriot (aka Eli Bradley, who we caught a glimpse of back in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier).

It’s true that X-23 hasn’t technically been a member of the Young Avengers in the comics, but the MCU is no stranger to building its own sector of Marvel mythology, and if all of the above characters turn out to be a part of this enterprise, X-23 would spice up the dynamics immaculately. How might she relate to Ms. Marvel and Wiccan, the two other mutants of the group, when the contrast of her personality is accounted for? How might she both accommodate and challenge Patriot—who seems to boast a similarly stoic demeanor—and vice versa? And if X-23 ends up linking the team to the X-Men the way that America Chavez links them to Kamar-Taj and the wider multiverse, how might the two differ as liaison-types? You know what to do, Feige.