TEN MARVEL CHARACTERS THAT COULD MAKE THEIR WAY TO DISNEY INFINITY 3.0 IN 2016

This Tuesday, Disney Interactive hosted an event where they unveiled some new Marvel Disney Infinity figures that would be launching with the Marvel Battlegrounds play set on March 15th: Ant-Man, Black Panther, Vision, and a solo alien costume Spider-Man. During this same event, it was announced that there would be no 4.0 edition of the popular toys-to-life game, and instead more play sets and characters would be added to last year’s 3.0 edition throughout 2016 across the game’s four big properties: Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, and of course, Marvel.

I’m eagerly excited to pick up Battlegrounds in less than two weeks, along with the four new available characters, but I’m also curious as to what characters will be rolled out throughout the rest of the year. I’ve come up with a list of ten characters that could possibly make their way into the Battlegrounds arena, based on Disney’s tendency to align their games and comics with their movie and TV plans. For the ten characters I’ve assigned a probability of low, medium or high, with high obviously being the chance that they’ll get a figure, low being unlikely but still wishful thinking and medium falling somewhere in the middle. This list isn’t in any particular order, which is why it’s not categorized as a top ten list.

1) DOCTOR STRANGE

PROBABILITY: HIGH

doctor strange

This year more than others, Disney Interactive has been putting out Infinity figures alongside each major film release: There was a Force Awakens play set along with figures in December, Spot launched with The Good Dinosaur, this week saw the two main characters from Zootopia released to coincide with the films release on Friday and Baloo is just around the corner when the live-action Jungle Book comes out. Doctor Strange is the second of two Marvel films this year after Captain America: Civil War so I would expect the Sorcerer Supreme to land in store shelves sometime in the month of November.

2) SCARLET WITCH

PROBABILITY: HIGH

scarlet witch mcu

Consumers today are very, let’s just say “sensitive”, about the way toys are released today, demanding more now than ever that everyone gets an equal representation in the market. That’s why it’s very surprising to me that there hasn’t been a Scarlet Witch Disney Infinity figure released with the most recent batch of figures, especially given the fact that play sets normally launch with two figures and Marvel Battlegrounds only comes with one and there’s only two female Marvel Infinity figures: Black Widow and Gamora. Why not put out Scarlet Witch with Captain America? From the Civil War trailer it appears that the two will be on the same side. One of the team members during the stream on Twitch on Tuesday of Battlegrounds let it slip that there was a new character that they can’t talk about, but said “she” is awesome. Nearly everyone we’ve seen in the Civil War trailer has a figure in Disney Infinity, so I would expect Scarlet Witch to show up in this year’s round of Marvel characters.

3) MS. MARVEL

PROBABILITY: HIGH

ms marvel 1

The new Ms. Marvel, Kamala Kahn, has not appeared in any Marvel TV show or movie, yet she is easily one of the most popular characters the publisher has today thanks to her superbly written and critically acclaimed ongoing series. When Kamala appears in a mobile game or Lego title, people get excited, and this year she not only joined the Avengers in the newly launched All New, All Different Avengers, but she’ll be making an appearance on the upcoming season of Disney XD’s Avengers Assemble which starts up again next month. Normally Infinity figures are produced after a character makes it big in a movie, but if there’s one character that would break that trend, it would be the new Ms. Marvel.

4) CAPTAIN MARVEL

PROBABILITY: MEDIUM

captain marvel infinity

Wait? Ms. Marvel is a legacy character yet you rank her higher than Captain Marvel in showing up this year? Let me explain. Carol Danvers popularity has risen since she took on the mantle of Captain Marvel in 2012, and like Ms. Marvel, she will also show up in this season of Avengers Assemble. Captain Marvel also has an existing Disney Infinity model as she showed up in 2014’s 2.0 edition as a quest giver in the Avengers play set. Why I rank Ms. Marvel higher than Captain Marvel is that Kamala has stolen the spotlight from Carol as of late, and there’s the matter of the solo film starring the character that’s in the works yet unfortunately keeps getting pushed back. If Carol gets her very own Disney Infinity figure, I would expect if more in a future edition alongside her own movie than this year.

5) BARON ZEMO

PROBABILITY: MEDIUM

baron zemo

With the exception of Yellowjacket, most of the villains from Marvel’s slate of films have arrived in Disney Infinity: Loki, Ronan the Accuser and most recently, Ultron. Though Captain America: Civil War will deal primarily with Captain America and Iron Man as well as their respective teams squaring off against one another, Baron Zemo will also be making his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in the film. If tradition holds, Baron Zemo could very well be the spotlight villain for the Marvel line of Infinity figures this year. What could hold the Baron back is the fact that he hasn’t been seen in any stills or trailers yet, and he could just be a regular person who will have a more super villain-y look in a future Marvel film like another character that will show up on the list, or will have a brief cameo like Klaw and Strucker in Age of Ultron.

6) WINTER SOLDIER

PROBABILITY: MEDIUM

winter soldier disney infinity

Like the case with the Scarlet Witch, the Winter Soldier is now in the minority of figures who will be in Captain America: Civil War that doesn’t have an Infinity figure of his own. The character did appear as a summon in 2.0, just like another character who went on to get his own figure, Ant-Man, so maybe there’s hope for Captain America’s most trusted partner to become a playable character this year.

7) AGENT VENOM

PROBABILITY: LOW

agent venom

This is more wishful thinking on my part, as I’m a huge Agent Venom fan, but I do have somewhat of a case to back this up. Agent Venom is now a major character on this season of Disney XD’s Ultimate Spider-Man, along with the Scarlet Spider, Miles Morales and the Iron Spider armour worn by Amadeus Cho. Should they want to bring another character from the Spider-Man animated universe into Infinity, Agent Venom would make the most sense. There’s already two Spider-Men in Infinity once the alien costume comes out, so while I’d LOVE to have Miles Morales become a figure, he would be a little too similar, same thing with the Scarlet Spider, who I would also love to own and display. On top of their being two Spider-Men, there’s also two Iron Men in Disney Infinity, which would diminish the appeal of producing an Iron Spider figure. That is, unless the surprise reveal of Spider-Man in Civil War is in the armour.

8) CROSSBONES

PROBABILITY: LOW

cross bones

Baron Zemo is confirmed for the next Captain America film, but so is another villain, Crossbones, who went by his civilian identity in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Crossbones has actually shown up in trailers for the forthcoming Marvel movie and stills have shown the actor who plays the character, Frank Grillo, in full costume. I have the character’s probability as low as I expect him to play more of a henchman role and have a very small presence in Civil War, which would reduce his chance of getting an Infinity figure.

9) WAR MACHINE

PROBABILITY: MEDIUM

war machine

War Machine will soon be in four Marvel films, well, he was Iron Patriot in Iron Man 3 but it was just the same suit with a red, white and blue paint job. Paint job brings up a good point, because it would probably be fairly easy to repaint an existing Iron Man figure and add-on the appropriate accessories to make a War Machine figure. For those reason though, it also lowers the chance of the character showing up as there’s already Iron Man, as well as Hulk Buster, so there’s unfortunately little need for yet another armoured character for Disney Infinity 3.0 .

10 BARON MORDO

PROBABILITY: MEDIUM

baron mordo

Doctor Strange is still filming and we’ve yet to even see a trailer, but the villain set to challenge Stephen Strange is Baron Mordo, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor. Depending on the movie, Infinity figures arrive solo, or in pairs unless there’s a play set that lands along side a group of toys. Zootopia had two figures, The Jungle Book will have one, The Good Dinosaur had one and a set of power discs with allowed Arlo to show up, so maybe we’ll be able to get Doctor Strange and his adversary in the game when the film arrives later this year.

 

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