Any day now, the Young Avengers are going to assemble in the MCU. Well, at least, we hope so. Honestly, we’ve been expecting an announcement about some kind of team-up project for the adolescent superhero group for the past three years at least, but Marvel has yet to be forthcoming. In the absence of official news, then, it remains up to the next generation of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to name their dream crossovers. Enter Black Panther: Wakanda Forever breakout Dominique Thorne, aka Ironheart herself.
Ahead of her very own Disney Plus series arriving later this year, Thorne revealed to The Direct which of her fellow Young Avengers she would most love to work with in the franchise. In a very timely answer, the Riri Williams actress decided to go for Cassie Lang, Scott’s daughter who is nowadays played by Kathryn Newton, starting with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Thorne imagines the pair could bond over their intersecting backstories:
“Ooh, this is a good one. Let’s see. I would say maybe Cassie Lang, I’d say. I think the two of them, they’re definitely similar age group, all of that. But Cassie also experienced… We all, obviously, know the loss that Riri has experienced. Or if we don’t, we’ll come to know… It’s how she came to be. And so, Cassie though, in a way that I’m not sure we really have seen yet. But she also experienced loss in a different form with the Blip and all that that meant.”
So, there’s a big hint about what we’ve got to learn about Riri in Ironheart. Meanwhile, Thorne went on to say that the differences between Riri and Cassie, in terms of their backgrounds and personal histories, could lead to some interesting comparisons and contrasts between the future Stature and Ironheart:
“And to see the glimpses of her sort of taking up her own mantle and going on her own journey, as alluded to from all the [Quantumania] trailers, I think it would be pretty interesting to see how these two young girls from very different backgrounds, very different lifestyles, but of a similar age, and maybe a shared human emotion of loss, to see how they interact and what they do if they were to get together in this very super world of ours.”
At this point, there are certainly enough next-gen heroes in place for Marvel to go ahead with making the Young Avengers MCU canon. Presumably, the studio is just waiting on the perfect place for team leader Iron Lad to appear before pulling the pin on this one — although, frankly, they just missed the ball on that with Quantumania. By the looks of it, then, we might have to wait for Young Avengers to become a thing after Avengers: The Kang Dynasty gets here in 2025. In the meantime, maybe a Cassie-Riri union could take shape in Ironheart, once that streams sometime this fall.
