(Hella spoilers for Thunderbolts* below)
So now, in roughly 2027, weeks finally have someone trading under the name of the Avengers, presumably with a modicum of government endorsement (although”Selina Meyer, Director of SHIELD” doesn’t seem to be working out that well). And presumably Sam Wilson, aka Captain America, is not on board with this and is putting together his own team. But…who? If you go with strict definition – aka people who were involved in the Time Heist and are still alive and not retired on Earth – you’ve got…Rhodes (who is definitely getting too old for this shit, having already been War Machine for 16 years in this timeline), Ant-Man (and thus Wasp) and *maybe* the Hulk, who could just as easily be off-world along with Carol Danvers, Thor, Nebula, Rocket…
Okay, old Avengers are thin on the ground. So who does that leave on Earth who is active and known to the Avengers in an official capacity? Well, you have the Wakandans (including Shuri, the Dora Milaje, and possibly Riri Williams) but are they more likely to side with the White Wolf or with Official Captain America? Or either? Then you have the Magicians – Doctor Strange, Wong, America Chavez and company – maybe? There are SHIELD/SWORD/SABER operatives and allies past and present – the Pyms? Monica Rambeau? Kamala Khan? What the Hell ever happened with the Super-Skrull anyway? Shang-Chi is still out there somewhere and known to Wong, Carol and Bruce, who seem to be the closest thing to an Avengers leadership at the moment. And then there’s She-Hulk, who probably needs work. (This doesn’t even include people they have no reason to know about like Moon Knight or Silver Scarab or Echo, and you have to think Daredevil and his sort aren’t really on their radar). And of course, the whole world has forgotten Spider-Man.
So in terms of who is around to be an official team of Captain America’s Avengers, the practical lineup is Sam, Scott and Hope, Rhodey, maybe Monica, maybe Bruce, and if things were really bad maybe you get help from Wakanda or Kamar-Taj, with the likes of Kamala and Kate Bishop and Cassie Lang as the junior varsity AA team. You need the maybes just to fill out a roster of six.
The biggest takeaway from this Keltner List is that Phased 4 and 5 of the MCU, now technically complete, have shotgunned a lot out there without ever really building a through-line. We know there is a multiverse, but it’s been kind of orthogonal to the plot, and we don’t really have the kind of obvious destination as Infinity War was – in part because Jonathan Majors is a dick and screwed up the Kang angle, but to a large part because we have completely reset who’s in the MCU with a minimum of exposure. No one has gotten multiple movies, there’s been precious little team-building, so we’re in for a lot of hotshot work in Phase Six starting in July, for better or worse.
The challenge of the Infinity Saga was “can they stick the landing in a satisfying fashion” and they nailed the assignment. At this point, the challenge of the Multiverse Saga is “can they make anyone care.”