The Marvel Cinematic Universe After Avengers: Age of Ultron – The Science Character
The below contains minor spoilers for Avengers: Age of Ultron
With the release of the next big blockbuster in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Avengers: Age of Ultron will leave a few ripples in its wake. Perhaps the biggest of these will be the events which will lead the team into the upcoming Captain America movie, which includes a minor disbanding of the team combined with the assembly of a new team. In what becomes an interesting development (spoilers to follow) neither Iron Man nor the Hulk will be members of the team after this movie. While this of course has an effect on the focus on specific characters, it also changes something going on behind the scenes, namely the lack of any major scientific mind on the team. Although Ant-Man is likely to join the team as well, it will be the Lang version, not the Pym, thus leaving the main team with a genius mind to put together the science.
In the 1970s a similar enough dynamic existed, even when both Stark and Pym were active members of the team. Another one of the great scientific minds of the Marvel Universe was introduced to the Avengers, in what was the first member of the X-Men to be introduced to the team since Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver (who had weaker ties to the mutants at the time.) The character which was introduced was Beast, who had been on a break from the Avengers but who was looking for to be a member of a team.
There of course exists a major impediment to introducing Beast as a member of the Avengers, and that is that the film rights to the character do not belong to Marvel but rather to Fox who has their own universe of X-Men to compete with the MCU. This means explicitly that unless Fox gives up rights to the characters that such a union would be unlikely, and it is even unlikely that the character would be shared as Columbia is doing with Spider-Man, because the X-Men universe is on solid enough ground with their own company.
While using Beast is therefore somewhat out of the question, there is no real problem with introducing other characters who could have the same role and even powers, as long as the character were to be properly established beforehand as having nothing to do with the character. Incidentally there is potential for such a character that already exists in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though this one comes from television – Agent Fitz from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. It might seem like a strange suggestion at first but there exists enough of a link to establish something similar to Beast while also being different enough. The main link is that Fitz is one of the scientific geniuses behind the team, and that his colleague and closest friend (and also scientific genius) Jemma is also close to understanding the bioligical mechanism of certain super powers. As Beast’s super powers are mostly physical enhancements as opposed to supernatural the link is not that far off. It is worth mentioning as well that the actor that plays Fitz, Iain De Caestecker is one of the better actors from the show and might more easily transition to the big screen.
The fate of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is still somewhat up in the air, but if the show does meet an early demise then it does have a potential recruit waiting for the big screen treatment for a faithful enough treatment of a dedicated Avenger.
