Spoiler alert, again, for that movie that just came out, but the new title comes from Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who dubs her suicide squad “The New Avengers” after they save the day. Bucky (Sebastian Stan), Yelena (Florence Pugh) and their ragtag team end the Thunderbolts* adventure as the government-sanctioned Avengers stationed in the old Avengers tower. But in Captain America: Brave New World, Sam (Anthony Mackie) was also tasked with assembling a new Avengers team, so there might be some disagreements about who gets to officially call themselves Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in the future.
As a marketing gambit, this may indeed work in Marvel’s favor. Thunderbolts* actually had a relatively soft opening for a Marvel movie, but more people might be interested now that they know it’s actually The New Avengers. And retitling a film after it’s already come out is novel enough to stir up some interest, spoilers be damned. (See: Sebastian Stan putting up new posters at bus stops.) But ultimately, a marketing tactic is all this boils down to. After all, we already knew Yelena’s crew of misfits will appear in Avengers: Doomsday, so didn’t that basically make them Avengers already? Endgame‘s giant cast of every hero ever blurred the distinction of “Avenger” from “member of a specific team” to “pretty much anyone willing to defend Earth from global threats.” From an audience perspective, it doesn’t much matter who’s currently living in the tower, since all Marvel movies are basically auditions for those characters to be Avengers.
From a plot perspective, though, the distinction of “New Avengers” has precedent in the comics, where there are New Avengers, Young Avengers, Secret Avengers, West Coast Avengers, and all sorts of configurations in between. Some of those teams are government-sanctioned, some not, and the tension there might set up some Civil War-esque conflict in Avengers: Doomsday. Of course, it’s a tall order for Joe and Anthony Russo to juggle a handful of different teams and dozens of different characters, but Marvel is banking on the directors recapturing some of their Endgame magic.
Pugh, at least, can’t believe her team has been given such a prestigious title, joking to Entertainment Weekly that she thought it was going to be taken away as a joke. “I was obviously really shocked, also because we’ve never seen these people work together before. Throughout the movie, there are winks and slight promises of them being able to work together, and it’s only really at the end that you’re like, ‘Oh, I can kind of see that happening,’ so I remember being as shocked when I read the Valentina line as Yelena was—all of them were,” she said. “It’s a huge honor. It’s massive, oh my God. It’s so thrilling to think that those at Marvel actually thought that that was a possibility and that they wanted to put us next to that. It is huge.”
