According to a Caleb Williams of Knight Edge Media, Marvel Studios is keen on introducing Alpha Flight to the MCU. Normally one tweet wouldn’t get me to turn on my laptop and type up a story, but this tweet resonates with some things I’ve heard and discussed on the podcast in the past.
Created by John Byrne and first appearing in 1979’s Uncanny X-Men #120, Alpha Flight is a Canadian super team that plays a key role in the the long history of Wolverine; in fact, their first appearance saw their team leader, Vindicator, who first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #109 where he failed in his solo effort to bring the Canucklehead back into the fold, lead his team in to atone for his failure. The original team, which included Sasquatch, Shaman, twins Northstar and Aurora and Snowbird under the command of Vindicator-characters Byrne had developed long before his tenure at Marvel-were chosen to provide the X-Men with a real challenge. In 1983, Byrne wrote a solo Alpha Flight series that introduced one of the team’s most beloved members, Eugene Judd, aka Puck. Recently Puck lead a different version of Alpha Flight into space working alongside Carol Danvers before the original team returned just this past Fall.
This rumor is incredibly interesting to me because, as Charles Villanueva and I have talked about on the podcast several times, it lines up with some information I heard quite some time ago, so while I am in no way confirming this, it’s definitely something I will keep an eye on because one of my most trusted sources told me that Alpha Flight was a property that Marvel Studios One-Above-All, Kevin Feige, believed to have great potential. This information was from a time before Disney Plus was a factor, so I have no idea what the plans might be, but if we speculate a bit, you can see there are a lot of options.
Obviously, everyone will eagerly focus on Wolverine’s past with the team as they eagerly anticipate the MCU version of Logan, but there are more options here than him. In Avengers: Endgame, Hulk mentions that part of the process of him merging his two personalities was spending some time in his “gamma lab” during the 5 year hiatus; I’m curious to see if Dr. Walter Langkowski, aka Sasquatch, might have been a part of his team or if, like in the comics, he was doing his own work on the Hulk’s experiment. Either way, Sasquatch, who played an interesting role in Al Ewing‘s The Immortal Hulk, brings another gamma related character into the mix in addition to She-Hulk.
Mutant twins Northstar and Aurora are more than just copies of the Maximoff twins. Jean-Paul Beaubier is the first major Marvel character to be openly gay and his sister, Jeanne-Marie, has struggled with dissociative identity disorder throughout her years in the comics. Michael Twoyoungmen, aka Shaman, is a powerful First Nations mystic who has taken some harrowing journeys throughout the years and aided in the birth of Snowbird, a demigod and daughter of the Inuit goddess Nelvanna. As Marvel Studios continues to make their films more representative of the world, you can see how Alpha Flight provides a great opportunity to diversify their character lineup.
Again, this is all speculation based off a single tweet, so temper your expectations and be cautious and careful in how you spread the news. I am NOT confirming the rumor, only sharing that I heard 2 years or so ago that Feige saw great promise in the group and speculating on how they might fit in. For all we know, it might not even be the original team and, instead, the tweet is about the version that served with Captain Marvel. As always, time will tell.
