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‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ and ‘Quantumania’ pave the way for the MCU team Marvel should already be assembling

It's time to put these guys on the map.

Tenoch Huerta as Namor in 'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever'/Jonathan Majors as Kang in 'Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania'
Images via Marvel Studios

While Marvel fans are mostly concerned with when and where the New Avengers and the Young Avengers will be coming together, there’s another superhero team from the source material that might be primed to assemble even sooner, thanks to the double-whammy of the MCU’s two most recent movies. First Black Panther: Wakanda Forever introduced a key member of the group, and now Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is set to reintroduce a firm fan favorite who happens to be their leader.

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The team in question is the Agents of Atlas, who might not be the most famous of the many super-groups in Marvel Comics history but they nonetheless deserve their chance in the spotlight. Originally forming in 2006, comprising of characters from Marvel’s early days (back when the company was called Atlas Comics), the team was revamped in 2019 to exclusively consist of Asian and Asian American heroes.

On the page, the Agents of Atlas include Namor’s cousin Namora among its roster. Mabel Cadena’s character in Wakanda Forever was introduced as a fierce warrior with a blind-sided hatred of surface-dwellers, so there’s lots of potential there for her to get a redemption arc and become a hero. While Namora isn’t Asian in the MCU, Marvel could always blend the two iterations of the team together and instead depict most — if not all — of the members as being of Asian descent.

Namora’s debut doesn’t necessarily point to the team’s arrival on its own, but a certain character’s comeback in Quantumania certainly adds fuels to the flames. As confirmed by the footage shown at Marvel’s D23 Expo last fall, Randall Park appears as Jimmy Woo in the threequel, making this his third MCU project following Ant-Man and the Wasp and WandaVision. At this point, then, the FBI guy is primed to follow in his comic counterpart’s shoes and establish the Agents of Atlas.

Considering that Shang-Chi is likewise among their number, as are Wave and Amadeus Cho ⁠— two characters set to appear in the Spider-Man: Freshman Year animated series, which is MCU canon ⁠— the odds are looking very healthy indeed that this team’s time in the sunshine is coming very soon. We bet Kevin Feige is already mapping out the Agents of Atlas’ future as we speak.