‘New Warriors’ Star Remembers the Marvel Show That Almost Was

It’s been a Marvel-heavy weekend thanks to D23, and that includes a Marvel show that never happened.

That’d be New Warriors. In case you forgot, it only got to the pilot stage before Freeform decided it couldn’t fit in its 2018 slate and Marvel couldn’t find another network to take it. August 2026 marks the 10-year anniversary of the show’s development and Theler used Instagram to share some photos and behind the scenes details. No one was supposed to take pics or vids on set, let alone ones of Milana Vayntrub in the full Squirrel Girl getup…but he said he could “let my MCU introduction go completely undocumented. […] As far as I know, this is the only footage from our shoot outside whatever Marvel has locked away in a vault.”

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Set in Cleveland, the New Warriors show would’ve focused on a team made up of Milana Vayntrub as Squirrel Girl, Thuler as Mr. Immortal, Jeremy Tardy as Night Thrasher, Calum Worthy as Speedball, Kate Comer as Debri, and Matthew Moy as Microbe. Picture “Marvel meets The Office,” as Thuler said the team would’ve had their exploits learning the superhero ropes recorded by a documentary crew following them around.

In his words, the show was “hilarious,” its crew “incredible,” and the cast clicked immediately. But then the show fell into “Hollywood limbo,” and the rest is history. While Vayntrub’s since voiced Squirrel Girl in Marvel Rivals and other Marvel media, her costars haven’t gotten another chance to inhabit their characters. Thuler said everyone regularly keeps in touch, and he occasionally wonders how New Warriors would’ve been received had it gotten to live.

Left only with those thoughts, he concluded with the brief moment he and his costars got to be “the New Warriors of Cleveland, Ohio. It was awesome.”

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