Marvel's "New Warriors" Has Found Its Squirrel Girl

Three months after being picked up straight to series by Freeform, Marvel’s New Warriors has found its cast. Leading the team is Milana Vayntrub (This Is Us) in the coveted role of Squirrel Girl, while Baby Daddy’s Derek Theler will portray Mister Immortal in Marvel’s first live-action scripted comedy.

The series will be only ten episodes to start with, in keeping with the new trend of defining a “season” as what we used to call a “miniseries”. The show is about six young people learning to cope with their abilities in a world where bad guys can be as terrifying as bad dates. Joining Vayntrub and Theler are Jeremy Tardy as Night Thrasher, Calum Worthy as Speedball, Matthew Moy as Microbe and Kate Comer as Debrii.

Kevin Biegal is the showrunner, and a longtime Squirrel Girl fan: “I am thrilled beyond belief to be working with this incredible group of actors. They are funny, sincere, eager, charming and perfectly embody these characters. It’ll be a blast and an honor to create this show with each of them.”

Actors can tell a fun role when they see one. Milana Vyantrub beat out a number of Squirrel Girl hopefuls, including Pitch Perfect’s Anna Kendrick, Stranger Things breakout Shannon Purser (Barb), and Parenthood grad Mae Whitman — but her series regular commitment to NBC’s upcoming Good Girls made that conversation short, though sources say the character was written with the actress in mind.

Described as the junior version of The Avengers, the New Warriors are a superhero squad made up of teenagers, one of whom would include Doreen Green (Squirrel Girl).

Squirrel Girl debuted in 1992’s Marvel Super-Heroes No. 8 as the comic foil for Iron Man in a short story plotted and illustrated by Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko. She has a fascinating (if bizarre) history. Her abilities include not only communicating with squirrels, she also possesses super-speed and strength. She’s got a three to four foot long prehensile tale, buck teeth strong enough to chew through wood, and sidekicks – who are squirrels. There’s just no getting around that. Still, she’s a vastly underrated superhero, even going toe to toe with Galactus and winning.

The time is obviously right for Squirrel Girl. Light hearted and fun. She may not be the only female superhero we need, but she’s good enough for us.

We had guessed that we wouldn’t see New Warriors until late in 2017 at the earliest, and we were right – the new series will launch in 2018. It is Freeform’s second Marvel series and joins Cloak and Dagger at the Disney-owned network. It is unclear if both series will launch at the same time and whether they will be paired together if so.