New Warriors' Main Characters Have Already Been Selected

CBR

By Rob Cave

Published Apr 6, 2017

The main cast of characters for Freeform's New Warriors has already been selected, but they have not yet been announced.

Though Freeform announced a "New Warriors" TV series featuring Squirrel Girl earlier today, the show's cast of characters remains a mystery -- but only to fans. Karey Burke, exec vp programming and development at Freeform, told The Hollywood Reporter that "we know who [the New Warriors] are but I'm not at liberty to say."

What's more, she revealed "the characters they've chosen [for the New Warriors] are all really singular and could each carry the show that they're on. They're bound together as a band of underdogs for as long as we choose with this show but it's conceptually tailor-made for spinoffs."

Of course, this doesn't reveal who exactly is on the team or whether or not its membership will formally include Squirrel Girl, who was not a New Warrior in the comics.

In its initial announcement, THR described the show as revolving "around about six young people with powers living and working together" and that the series would follow their "journey into adulthood, except in this world, they’re not quite super and not yet heroes and the [bad] guys can be as terrifying as bad dates."

In the comics, many of the team's founding members -- like Firestar and Speedball -- had already starred in their own solo series before joining together to form their own super group. A number of other young heroes, including Rage and Darkhawk, were added to the team's roster later on.

The “New Warriors” debuted in late 1989’s “Thor” #411 before quickly landing their own ongoing series. Hailed as “heroes for the ’90s,” the original “New Warriors” series lasted 75 issues. The team has returned a number of times over the years, including for a more comedic take which positioned the team as reality TV stars in 2005.

Created by Will Murray and Steve Ditko, Squirrel Girl also debuted in the early ’90s in “Marvel Super-Heroes” #8. Squirrel Girl most recently landed her own popular ongoing series — “Unbeatable Squirrel Girl” by Ryan North and Erica Henderson — which dialed up the hero’s optimism and comedic tone as she entered college and continued to earn the heroic adjective “unbeatable” in fights with major Marvel villains such as Doctor Doom and Galactus.

"New Warriors" does not yet have a release date.