Hey, Marvel: We’re Still Waiting for an All-Female Avengers

If you were one of the thousands (millions?) who saw Thor: Ragnarok when it came out in 2017, then you know: Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie deserves her own stand-alone movie. This is not some boring love interest or worthless sidekick, there only to propel Thor’s story forward. Oh no, Valkyrie—or Scrapper 142, as we first know her—is many things: a badass warrior, a messy drunk, a bisexual woman, a protector of the innocent…to name just a few.

By the movie’s end, it was obvious that this wouldn’t be the last we’d see of Valkyrie in the Marvel universe—and it wasn’t. She shows up again in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, even teaming up with Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) for a true girl-power moment. When we leave her, Thor has appointed Valkyrie the ruler of New Asgard so he can run off with the Guardians of the Galaxy.

But aside from a few references that tease her complicated backstory, there’s clearly so much more to learn about this character. So much so, in fact, that fans have been calling for a spin-off. (Personally, I’d love to see a prequel of the Valkyries’ battle with Hela. It’d be so badass, right?)

Tessa’s clearly on board too:

And it doesn’t stop there. Fans have long been suggesting that an all-female Avengers movie, with Captain Marvel leading the pack, is long overdue.

That actually has some legs to it. In an interview with cbr.com, Thompson revealed that she—along with fellow Marvel stars Zoë Saldana, Scarlett Johansson, Pom Klementieff, Karen Gillan, and Brie Larson—once approached Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige to pitch the concept. “We were just sort of all in a semicircle talking, and it just came up, because none of us really worked together…and wouldn’t it be nice if we could all work together?” she said. “We were sort of speculating on the ways in which it might happen in Infinity War, or might not happen, and we thought, No, we should just have a whole movie where we know every day we’re going to arrive and get to work together. So we just ran right up to Kevin Feige and started talking about it.”

According to her, “He’s really open to collaboration and wants to hear what we’re interested in.”

That was back in 2017, and nothing official seems to have come from the discussion. Many fans—myself included—have wondered whether that Endgame battle scene is all we’ll get. And in a new interview with *Variety,* Larson confirmed Thompson’s story that the idea was floated past Feige.

“I will say that a lot of the female cast members from Marvel walked up to Kevin and we were like, ‘We are in this together, we want to do this,’” Larson says. “What that means, I have no idea. You know, I’m not in charge of the future of Marvel, but it is something that we’re really passionate about and we love, and I feel like if enough people out in the world talk about how much they want it, maybe it’ll happen.”

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Olsen, who plays Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch in the MCU, also expressed interest in an all-female Marvel Studios film. In fact, she believes it would have a "huge impact" because "comics aren't just for boys."

"I think people really love these characters," she recently told Buzzfeed News. "I feel like all the men in Marvel movies have done such a brilliant job with satisfying a lot of things our audiences want, and they're funny and they're talented. And so are all the women. And to give them more screentime, I think, would be a huge impact because comics aren't just for boys who want to watch big boys."

The thing is, there’s actually a precedent in the comics: In the ’70s, an all-female group called the Lady Liberators was created by the Enchantress. The team consisted of Black Widow and Scarlet Witch, and they were led by Valkyrie.

Of course, these are just pipe dreams until Marvel announces anything. The studio would be wise to listen to these women, though. Yes, Marvel’s action movies have been doing a better job lately of creating female characters who are more integral to the story and, perhaps even more important, the fights. (Take Gamora in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, for example.) Even better, we finally got a female-fronted stand-alone with Larson’s Captain Marvel this year. But let’s not forget this is the same company that slept on a Black Widow solo film for years and rarely included actions figures of her in Avengers toy rollouts:

But at the end of the day, money talks—and that’s where I’d like to direct Marvel’s attention to the aforementioned Captain Marvel. After a month at the box office, the film made a massive $1 billion. If that’s not evidence enough this could work, what is?

A version of this article originally appeared in 2017.

Anna Moeslein is a senior editor at Glamour.

Originally Appeared on Glamour