Wakanda Forever's Midnight Angels Can Be More To The MCU Than The Comics
Contains spoilers for "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever"
For a content catalog designed with family outings in mind, the Marvel Cinematic Universe sure does feature a whole lot of assassins. We're talking about cold-blooded murderers whose entire job description is to write the final chapters of a life's story with the kind of morbid creativity that would put executive producer Dick Wolf out of business.
This isn't really news to anyone who's come into contact with the MCU, but Phase One gave us Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Phase Two gave us the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) and the Guardians of the Galaxy (Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and Karen Gillan), Phase Three gave us the Dora Milaje (Danai Gurira et al.), and Phase Four gave us Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), Xialing (Meng'er Zhang), and Marc Spector (Oscar Isaac) ... all killers by trade, and those are the good guys.
Well, the list grows evermore. "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," the final film in Phase Four, cordoned off a bit of space for a new category of trained hit women, because apparently, the Dora Milaje isn't enough for Wakanda. Enter the Midnight Angels — and it's possible that they could pop up all over the MCU.
Who are the Midnight Angels?
The Midnight Angels are a subset of the Dora Milaje (via Marvel). So if the Dora Milaje is an elite force of trained spear women, ready and willing to kill, then the Midnight Angels are that multiplied by a factor of Ironman armor and weaponry. In the comics, the Midnight Angels are so lethal that at one point, they are summoned to assassinate Victor Von Doom, a tyrant whose powers are so great that he's become a god on more than one occasion (via Marvel Database). It's important to note that, in every iteration of their story, the Midnight Angels are created from the need to operate outside of the boundaries defined by the Wakandan government ... and sometimes even against the Wakandan government.
In both the comics and the MCU, Aneka (Michaela Coel) and Ayo (Florence Kasumba) are key members of the Midnight Angels. Okoye (Danai Gurira) is only a Midnight Angel in the MCU. In "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," Okoye creates the Midnight Angels in response to Shuri (Letitia Wright) demanding war against Namor (Tenoch Huerta) for drowning her mother, Ramonda (Angela Bassett), not to stop her, although that would have been in line with the comics' intent, but rather to assist her.
Is that kind of against the Midnight Angels' purpose? Yes, but Okoye has some overcompensation issues, thanks to a severe verbal lashing and subsequent punishment from Ramonda.
Their potential future in the MCU
"Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" isn't about the Midnight Angels, so claiming that they were underused isn't quite the right phrasing, but they definitely could be more than war fodder in a secondary battle sequence. Like the Dora Milaje before them, it's possible, hopeful even, that the Midnight Angels will make appearances in other projects. The most likely stories to see them crop up in, it seems, are "Armor Wars" and "Ironheart." Both are focused on Ironman tech, which the Midnight Angels are essentially wearing an improved version of, and since the titular star of "Ironheart" got her start in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" too, it would be fitting for the Disney+ series to feature ties to Wakanda.
Of course, they could show up anywhere. Kevin Feige seems to relish turning audience expectations upside down for the sheer sake of being unpredictable. That being said, it's a safe bet to assume that the Midnight Angels will make an appearance, however brief, in any larger-scale crossover events planned for Phases Five and Six, like "Avengers: The Kang Dynasty" and "Avengers: Secret Wars."