Warning! Spoilers for Avengers: Endgame below.
Avengers: Endgame is finally upon us, and we finally have answers to all the burning questions we’ve been asking for the past year or so. As with any Avengers movie, there are scenes where the whole team is together, but there are also scenes in which certain characters are paired up and we see the kind of banter or rivalry they have when they’re in a room together. It’s an opportunity we rarely get and it often leads to a wish list of team-ups they’ll flesh out in later movies. Here are 10 MCU Team-Ups We Want To See After Avengers: Endgame.
Captain Marvel and Spider-Man
Carol Danvers and Peter Parker only have one moment together in Avengers: Endgame. It’s during the scene in which the Avengers are getting the Infinity Gauntlet across the battleground. Spidey is taken down by some alien baddies and the automated killing machine that Tony Stark put on the back of his suit is failing him, so Carol comes to the rescue and takes the Gauntlet the rest of the way. It’s just a brief moment, but it introduced a terrific chemistry between Tom Holland’s awkward, awestruck Peter and Brie Larson’s snarky, confident Carol. Captain Marvel doesn’t exactly need any help taking down bad guys, but maybe she likes Peter’s spirit.
Ant-Man and Ronin
If there’s one thing Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man is good at, it’s undercutting the serious moments with comedy. So, what better way to follow up Hawkeye’s dark chapter under the guise of Ronin than to have Ant-Man team up with him and constantly mock him for it? Ant-Man’s character works best when he’s making fun of the other characters’ DC-style darkness, while Hawkeye was a laughable character who just went through a dark phase and came out as a more interesting person. We need to see these two together. They already showed how well they pair in battle in Captain America: Civil War.
War Machine and Nebula
James Rhodes’ whole thing has been that he’s not as powerful or as cool as the other Avengers. Don Cheadle plays his humility really well, delivering every line with a deadpan style that puts us as the audience in his shoes. That’s what made him a perfect partner for Nebula in the time travel midsection of Avengers: Endgame. The moment where they saw Peter Quill dancing around with his Walkman, kicking small animals for fun, and Rhodes says, “So, he’s an idiot?” and Nebula pretty much agrees set them up for a wonderful pairing in the future – they’re the deadpan duo.
Thor and Captain Marvel
Early in Avengers: Endgame, before the five-year time jump, Carol Danvers arrives, Thor summons Stormbreaker right next to her head, and then when she smirks instead of flinching, he says, “I like this one.” After that, we don’t really see them in many scenes together.
But their meeting seemed to set up a really cool MCU partnership, so let’s hope that it’s being saved for a future movie. One of them is a literal god and the other is the most powerful character in the MCU. These two should pair up to take on an incredible threat, like Galactus or Adam Warlock.
Captain America (Sam Wilson) and Bucky Barnes
One of the original series slated for Disney’s upcoming streaming service is called Falcon & Winter Soldier, focusing on Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson (f.k.a. the Falcon) and Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes (f.k.a. the Winter Soldier). However, at the end of Avengers: Endgame, Steve Rogers got really old in the space of ten seconds and bequeathed his shield unto Sam, completely passing up Bucky for the job. So, it seems like Sam will become Captain America in time for this new series, which will either get retitled or be very confusing. Bucky seemed happy with Steve’s decision to pass the shield onto Sam, so there’ll be no resentment there.
Ant-Man and Professor Hulk
After Scott Lang’s taco blew away, Professor Hulk was nice enough to give him two fresh ones. That felt like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. While Lang’s idiocy was mocked by other smart characters like Tony Stark, Bruce Banner never made fun of him. He saw that he was a pretty smart guy without the scientific know-how to back it up. Well, Professor Hulk has that know-how. Lang came up with the time travel idea, and Professor Hulk started thinking of ways to do it. Plus, Lang can shrink down and enlarge himself, but the Hulk has sheer brawn. They’d make a terrific partnership, and audiences would go nuts for a movie starring Paul Rudd and Mark Ruffalo, two of the nicest and least problematic guys in Hollywood.
Gamora and Nebula
It’s unclear if Gamora will be sticking around in the MCU’s future. The timelines got very confusing, but the time travel seems to have saved her. All of the character development she went through with Nebula in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Avengers: Infinity War seems to have been erased, at the very least. For a while, they’ve been putting their differences aside and becoming friends. But we’ve had their relationship doled out piece by piece in minor scenes in male-led movies. MCU fans could really do with a whole movie dedicated to Gamora and Nebula’s sisterly relationship and intergalactic adventures.
Captain Marvel and Valkyrie
Fans have been “shipping” these two characters since the beginning. A lot of fans have suspected Carol Danvers of being gay since seeing how close she is with Maria Rambeau in her solo movie, while a cut scene from Thor: Ragnarok confirmed that Valkyrie is bisexual.
So, why not make them the MCU’s first LGBTQ power couple? Captain Marvel is incredibly powerful, sure, but so is Valkyrie. She flies around on a Pegasus and she was just made the Queen of New Asgard. Tessa Thompson has already said that Valkyrie would spoon with Captain Marvel, so let’s make that a reality.
Thor and the Guardians of the Galaxy
The final scenes of Avengers: Endgame might seem like they play out as a Return of the King-style slog of “Where are they now?” moments, but those scenes actually set up an interesting set of sequels. Marvel Studios has said it won’t announce its Phase 4 slate right after Endgame is released, but it doesn’t have to. Endgame itself lays out the Phase 4 slate in its final moments. The most tantalizing one is the notion that Lebowski Thor might be joining the Guardians of the Galaxy. How fun will it be to see latter-day comedic Thor join that eclectic group? In just one scene, it was fun, so imagine a whole movie.
Female Avengers
There’s a scene in Avengers: Endgame where all the female Avengers rally together to help Captain Marvel fight her way through Thanos’ army: Shuri, the Wasp, Valkyrie, Gamora, Nebula, Okoye, Scarlet Witch, Mantis, even Pepper Potts as Rescue. Some narrow-minded critics have noted this scene as pandering to the feminist Captain Marvel crowd with a “grrrl power” moment, but that’s not it at all. We’ve seen dozens of MCU scenes where a bunch of men, or a bunch of men with Black Widow tagged on, get together to fight the bad guys. And then when women do it, suddenly it’s pandering to the female crowd. Doesn’t the female crowd deserve that one scene, at least? Just one woman has been given a solo movie in a 22-film franchise, while the others have been delegated to sidekick roles in the men’s movies. This scene was the Russo brothers’ way of saying a ton of strong female characters have been introduced in this franchise and they don’t need their male counterparts to be cool. Let’s follow that up with a female Avengers film, a la Margot Robbie’s Birds of Prey movie in the DCEU.
