Let’s freak this one out a little nebulous. Recently, Hailee Steinfeld-who is supposed to play Kate Bishop in the MCU-was asked about this “CHAMPIONS” series listed on her IMDb page. Her reply? “I don’t even know what that is.” Hollywood confusion at that level is just the kind of thing that makes one scratch their head and wonder if anybody truly knows what’s going on anymore.
If you haven’t really done your homework on the Marvel comics lore, Champions are basically a teenage superhero team. Something along the lines of Young Avengers but with Ms. Marvel, Spider-Man (Miles Morales), and a few others. For years, Marvel has been rumored to be developing a project for the Champions now that they’ve thrown all these young characters into several shows and movies. So we’re told that the actress who ought to be credited for leading it has zero clue? That’s genuinely a bad sign.
This Variety tweet has stirred up a whole din of gamers and Marvel fans chiming in. There are a few that said, “This series is going to flop hard,” and a few stood in defense. Bemk69 mentioned how “None of these characters have landed in their other projects,” insinuating that this project is probably dead. But that got Shut down by SleepySalby: “Cassie is the only one who wasn’t well received cause her movie did her no justice,” referring to Ant-Man 3’s botched introduction of Cassie Lang.
There’s a huge debate on whether Marvel should even be bothering with Champions now they have X-Men coming. Like, can they do both? Queen_khaleesi4 suggested “They can X-Men as a movie and Champions as a TV show,” which honestly makes some sense. But that whole thing about actors’ salaries-Bemk69 pointed out that “hailee’s asking price is much higher than the other actors,” which, yeah, I mean, she’s Hailee Steinfeld after all; she’s got that Hawkeye money now.
But amidst all this messier stuff, the split on the characters springs up. GorouCOOL stated, “all the characters in that photo are very hated,” while blessedszn_ went in the opposite direction, “Joe Locke is the only one hated out of the 6 and it’s quite literally just because he’s gay.” Yikes. The accusations of homophobia have started flying, and the comment section is turning ugly.
Fans have started fantasy booking over how this would pan out. Zeddunes27 wants the Spider-Man joining the team in a future movie scene, but Bemk69 shut that idea down fast: “Spider man won’t be a part of a z-list team like champions.” How disrespectful! But… do they really mean disrespect? Would Peter really be taking orders from Kamala Khan? That’s a very good point.
All feels a bit… off? The actress oddly enough does not even appear to be sure what she is talking about; then fans are debating if it even ought to exist, meanwhile, Marvel’s been radio silent. That just reeks of development hell. Remember when we genuinely thought this was going to happen after all those young heroes got introduced? Now that looks more and more like it’ll never happen.
Now that’s an incredibly interesting element that feeds into the Phase 4/5 bigger problems for Marvel. They leveled up all these characters – America Chavez, Kate Bishop, Kamala Khan, Cassie Lang, Billy, and Tommy Maximoff – but where’s the payback? AyJay32217860 even said they’ve pretty much got 6-7 members ready to go with that post-credits scene in Agatha. So… mmm, why the holdup?
Some say it is money. Some say it is Marvel scaling back due to recent flops. And then you’ve got IMDb, which is probably not to be trusted-GuyWhoConquers said, “IMB is not a real source. It’s dumb that people take this as accurate.” Which… okay then. I mean, some days, basically any random Joe can put in an edit.
Well, quite the odd timings as Wiccan was officially announced for the MCU, like, last week? So it’s still very much a go with young heroes, but maybe Champions just got put on hold. Or maybe Hailee just hasn’t been told yet since Marvel might have learned its lesson in the Tom Holland debacle on keeping actors in the dark until the last possible minute.
On another note, this whole situation draws attention to how disorganised the plan actually has become. When your prospective leading lady herself is in the dark about the project she’s supposed to be attached to… that is not a good sign. Could be Champions happened one day. Could be not. It’s just another mystery to solve in the already convoluted MCU. And honestly? At this point, we don’t know a darn thing more than Hailee does.
