When the Young Avengers began their original run, it seemed as though the entire idea was to create a team of young versions of the original Avengers members. There were young versions of Captain America, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Ant-Man, Hulk, and Scarlet Witch. However, it didn’t take long for them to come into their own, with Iron Lad a version of Kang, Patriot the grandson of a different Captain America, and Hulkling as a future Kree-Skrull emperor. Thanks to The Children’s Crusade, it was shown that two of them were Scarlet Witch’s former children. Add in new members in the second volume, and the Young Avengers easily stood on their own.
While teams like The Champions and West Coast Avengers have replaced them as the Marvel Universe’s young hero teams, the Young Avengers remain iconic. They are still rumored to be one of the future big teams in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, not all the members have the same power levels as the best of the best.
12) Prodigy
Prodigy is a powerful mutant, but his power stems from his brain. David Alleyne joined in the second volume of the Young Avengers series, but he is mostly worthless in battle. His mutant power is that he is a psychomimetic. This means he can see and hear anything and immediately absorb all the knowledge and skills from his target. He can also predict attacks on others, making him a formidable defensive weapon, but in battle, he is primarily a tactical tool.
11) Patriot
Patriot initially seemed like a young version of Captain America, with the super soldier serum coursing through his veins. However, it turned out he was lying and wasn’t a natural hero at all. Elijah Bradley was the son of the original Captain America, Isaiah Bradley. However, he was faking it by taking the illegal Mutant Growth Hormone (MGH) that was created after Scarlet Witch said, “No More Mutants.” While it was used to give mutants their powers back as long as they kept taking the drugs, it also worked for normal humans. Without it, Patriot was powerless. Soon, the MGH ended up mutating his body, giving him natural powers, but he has since retired and prefers to live a peaceful life.
10) Hawkeye (Kate Bishop)
Kate Bishop got her start in Young Avengers Vol. 1 #1, and she has been around for so long that it sometimes seems hard to believe that was her first-ever appearance. She has no powers, and as of the start of the series, she was just an Olympic-level archer. However, she has since become even better thanks to training with Clint Barton, the original Hawkeye. Clint was so impressed that he gave her the right to use his codename. However, without archery equipment, she is a skilled martial artist, but doesn’t offer much in the way of power. Hawkeye is the only Young Avengers member to get her own MCU Disney+ series.
9) Stature
Stature is Scott Lang’s daughter. When she was a child, Scott had partial visitation rights of Cassie Lang, and he would let her run free around Avengers Mansion. She desperately wanted powers like her dad’s, and she ended up experimenting with Pym Particles. In the first issue of the original Young Avengers series, Cassie demonstrated that she could naturally grow, thanks to the Pym Particles altering her body over the years of exposure. However, as powerful as she is when she grows, Cassie still dies in the Children’s Crusade storyline. She was later resurrected and became Stinger, starting to work with her father. Cassie has also been in the MCU, appearing in the Ant-Man movies.
8) Speed
Speed was not an original Young Avengers member, but he was someone they recruited when they needed help. Vision (Jonas) hacked into the Avengers’ systems to identify who could assist them, and what they discovered was shocking. Tommy was, in fact, the reincarnation of Wanda Maximoff’s son, as was Billy (Wiccan), who was an original team member. While Billy possesses magical powers, Tommy has speed powers similar to those of Wanda’s twin brother, Quicksilver. Tommy can run at about 761 miles per hour, which makes him a great and powerful weapon, but this is severely slower than other speedsters, limiting what he can do with his speed.
7) Vision (Jonas)
Jonas is a version of The Vision, the long-time Avengers member. His origin began when a teenage version of Nathaniel Richards appeared on Earth-616 and discovered the destroyed Avengers Mansion (following the Avengers Disassembled storyline). He saw the destroyed Vision and added his operating system to his armor, helping him assemble the Young Avengers. When Iron Lad left, his armor remained and formed into a new Vision. Calling himself Jonas, he was technologically superior to Vision, but his maturity and knowledge were stunted since it was based on Iron Lad’s mentality. After Cassie Lang died in the Children’s Crusade, Iron Lad destroyed Vision, and he has since become the AI in Nathaniel Richards’s armor after he became Immortus.
6) Hulkling
Hulkling is very powerful, considering the military forces he now commands. When the Young Avengers first formed, Hulkling made himself resemble the team’s version of the Hulk. However, he was much more than that, and he only chose that identity to maintain the team’s theme of being similar to The Avengers. However, the truth is he was a Skrull and could shapeshift. Hulkling ended up as much more than that when Super Skrull showed up for him, followed by the Kree, and it was revealed he was Captain Mar-Vell’s son with a Skrull princess, making him a Kree-Skrull hybrid. He has since become the emperor of the United Kree-Skrull Empire. His powers are immense, but he is below the five most powerful members of the Young Avengers.
5) Kid Loki
Kid Loki is, in fact, Loki. During the events of Siege, Loki worked on both sides of the war, helping Norman Osborn while also appearing to collaborate with his fellow Asgardians. Realizing that his plan to return Asgard to the Nine Realms would fail, and Norman would allow Sentry to annihilate it, Loki sacrificed his life by praying to Odin and using the Norn Stones against the Void, which killed him. He resurrected as Kid Loki, and after his fellow Asgardians refused to trust him, he ended up joining the Young Avengers in the second volume. While Loki remains extremely powerful, his magic was limited as a child. He was still very powerful, but needed to rest more between using his spells, and he was also limited to how powerful his spells were.
4) Iron Lad
Iron Lad is a teenage Nathaniel Richards, the being who would one day grow up to become Kang the Conqueror. However, Nathaniel wanted to be a hero and avoid his fate, a decision he made after meeting the real Kang from the future. He traveled to Earth-616 to join the Avengers, only to find they had been destroyed. Instead, he started his group, the Young Avengers. Sadly, his pride and passion pushed him away, and he ended up leaving the team to find his way. He possesses most of the future technology that Kang has, and he demonstrated his power when he seemingly killed Kang and later returned to help defeat Doctor Doom. He also destroyed Vision (Jonas). Iron Lad ultimately followed his destiny, becoming Kang, and eventually evolved into Immortus.
3) Marvel Boy
Marvel Boy didn’t debut in Young Avengers, but it was there that he proved himself to be a hero. Noh-Varr is from Earth-200080, and he was initially a villain in the Marvel Comics universe. He was part of Norman Osborn’s Dark Avengers, where he used the original Captain Mar-Vell’s moniker. He is a young Kree warrior whose parents were Captain Glory and Star Splendor. However, after he betrayed the Supreme Intelligence to save the Earth, he set out to become a hero. He began dating Kate Bishop and joined the Young Avengers, of which she was already a member. He possesses basic Kree physiology, which grants him greater power than most Earth-based heroes, while also affording him complete mental control over all parts of his body.
2) America Chavez
America Chavez arrived in the second volume of Young Avengers, showing up to stop Kid Loki from stealing Wiccan’s powers. However, soon Kid Loki and America both ended up joining the team. America is from the Utopian Parallel, a dimension outside of time and space, which means she is one of the few characters who do not have multidimensional variants. The reason she came to Earth-616 was that she was determined to save Wiccan from Loki in another timeline and had sworn to protect every version of Wiccan. Her powers include superhuman strength, durability, and invulnerability. Few people can beat her, and she proved to be more powerful than Kid Loki every step of the way. However, her greatest power is her Star Portal Creation, which can open portals allowing her to travel the Multiverse.
1) Wiccan
The most powerful member of the Young Avengers is, without question, Wiccan. Billy Kaplan possesses the spirit of one of Wanda Maximoff’s twin children within him, which has granted him magical powers that rival even his mother’s, who is one of Marvel’s most powerful mystics. He has reality manipulation magic like Scarlet Witch, and while he doesn’t use spells, he does use incantations to make his magic work. To add to Wiccan’s power levels, he is also prophesied to become the Demiurge, an omnipotent being with reality-altering powers that are almost limitless and can wipe entire races of beings from existence and possibly rewrite reality itself. Wanda showed this in House of M, and Billy is rumored to be even more powerful if he takes this form.
