The MCU is about to get more female and LGBTQ characters, says Marvel boss

The MCU is about to undergo an almighty shakeup. Not only are female superheroes on the verge of outnumbering their male counterparts on the big screen in the near-future, Kevin Feige has said that openly LGBTQ characters are also on the way – both in terms of new and current characters.

Far from being any sort of token gesture, Feige confirmed to Screen Rant that “I think we're getting to the point soon where we have so many great female characters that those are just our heroes as opposed to when are they all female, all male. It's just the Marvel heroes, more than half of which will be women."

While the culling of Avengers: Infinity War did much to shelve many of the male contingent of the MCU, it’s clear that women are becoming more and more prominent in Marvel movies. Ant-Man and the Wasp is the first Marvel film to include a female character in the title and, of course, there’s the small matter of the Captain Marvel movie next year. That promises to be only the beginning of the changes.

Speaking to The Playlist (Kevin Feige is a busy, busy man!), the Head of Marvel Studios also took another progressive step, indicating that we’ll be exploring some LGBTQ themes in the near-future. In fact, a current MCU hero may also be part of that representation shift, with Feige saying that the LGBTQ characters will be “Both ones you’ve seen and ones you haven’t seen.” That follows on from Tessa Thompson’s declaration that Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok was bi, and may have played a factor in Feige’s decision...

Superhero movies, once an entrenched male-dominated world, a shrine to overblown machismo, are changing. Yet again, Marvel aims to be at the forefront of it all.

Those new Marvel movies just got a whole lot more interesting, huh?