Could Skaar Join The Young Avengers in The MCU?
Can you tell I'm impatient for a Young Avengers announcement??
The She-Hulk season 1 finale was a delight in so many ways—and one of its surprises was the introduction of Bruce Banner’s Sakaarian son, Skaar. After spending most of the season off-world, Bruce shows up at a family picnic to reveal that the reason he was called away to Sakaar several episodes earlier was to pick up Skaar and bring him to Earth. Did Bruce have any inkling about Skaar’s existence beforehand? Was the plan always to bring him home? We know absolutely nothing yet, and knowing Marvel, we’ll have to wait at least a year or two to find anything out.
Fans of Skaar’s comics counterpart immediately noticed a drastic change in his appearance and demeanor, with the new Skaar appearing more subdued than the original. Whoever this new Skaar is, he’s a departure from the Skaar we know. Could Marvel be setting Skaar up for an extremely different role in the MCU? Could he even join the Young Avengers as their resident hulk?
Skaar in the comics
In the Planet Hulk and World War Hulk storylines, Skaar is the offspring of Hulk and a woman named Caiera the Oldstrong. Skaar is conceived while Hulk is on Sakaar, but when Caiera is killed and Hulk returns to Earth to get revenge on the people who did it, Skaar follows him and the two wreak havoc. Check out this character description from Marvel.com:
[Skaar] grows abnormally fast, and without his parents to raise him, so does his rage. Taken in by savage creatures, the child learns at a young age to kill to survive. Given the name Skaar, he’s immediately proclaimed a prophet by some and a demon by others. However, he only cares about claiming his birthright—the Old Power.
Yeesh. The Skaar from the comics is definitely not the type of kid you’d take to your relatives’ backyard get-together. And while the MCU’s Skaar probably has some daddy issues to work through (oh, Marvel and its daddy issues!), Marvel is already signaling pretty hard that this isn’t the rage-filled monster that comics readers are familiar with. Marvel is clearly going in a different direction with Skaar’s character.
The Young Avengers need a hulk!
Although no official project has been announced yet, Marvel has been building a Young Avengers team from the beginning of Phase 4. So far, America Chavez, Kate Bishop, Kid Loki, Billy Kaplan (a.k.a. Wiccan), and other young heroes have already been introduced.
In the comics, the Young Avengers lineup includes Teddy Altman, a.k.a. Hulkling. Teddy is a half-Kree, half-Skrull shapeshifter who was raised on Earth. Unlike Skaar, Teddy is a decent and level-headed guy who’s in a committed relationship with Billy. There’s no sign of Teddy in the MCU yet, although he could show up in Secret Invasion or The Marvels, since those projects deal with the Skrulls and the Kree, respectively.
But the MCU is much smaller than the Marvel comics universe, and it already has three active hulks. Adding a fourth hulk could potentially make things pretty crowded and confusing for viewers. If Marvel wants a young hulk in the MCU, it makes much more sense to just go with Skaar, or combine Skaar and Teddy’s characters into one.
But wait! The MCU NEVER changes its characters from the comics!
Oh, get outta here with that—you know full they’ve messed with characters before. Take, for example, Sylvie from Loki.
In the comics, Sylvie Lushton is a human who’s given powers by Loki (or possibly created by him entirely), and then takes on the mantle of the Enchantress. Meanwhile, the character whom fans call “Lady Loki” is Loki in female form. In the MCU, Sylvie is a Loki variant from another universe. By naming this Loki variant Sylvie, Marvel effectively combined Sylvie and Lady Loki into one character. Whether you agree with that creative decision or not (and yeah, the MCU’s treatment of genderfluidity is problematic), the fact remains that there’s plenty of precedent for the MCU combining, deleting, and streamlining the hundreds of superheroes it has to choose from in the Marvel comics universe.
So, is the MCU continuing to build a Young Avengers team? Will Skaar be a member? Remember that there are release dates in Phase 6 with no titles attached yet, so we know a bunch of secret projects are still coming down the pipeline. And when we’re properly introduced to Skaar, whether that’s in World War Hulk or something else entirely, we may find that his personality meshes surprisingly well with the other young heroes on the big screen.
(featured image: Marvel Entertainment)
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