Shannon Purser is having a breakout summer, playing the fan-favorite character of Barb on the hit Netflix series Stranger Things. But it wasn’t very long after the show premiered before fans began noticing similarities between Purser and everyone’s favorite member of the Great Lakes Avengers, Squirrel Girl.
Purser is a huge comics fan (she even cosplays) and pretty soon. she was stoking the Squirrel Girl flames on Twitter herself.
https://twitter.com/ShannonPurser7/status/757241299049320448
A few weeks later, she made her intentions even more clear in an interview with online mag Revelist.
I think Squirrel Girl is just adorable but at the same time is totally boss and completely awesome. I think people need a character like that. It’s easy in the superhero realm to feel like a lot of the female superheroes we see are grown women who are super responsible and know what their purpose is and that kind of thing. Squirrel Girl is a little bit younger and like a real person, trying to figure out her life and then also having to save the world. I love that.”
Purser joins Anna Kendrick, another celeb who has expressed interest in playing Squirrel Girl this summer. Kendrick recently gained a high-profile supporter when Scott Pilgrim director Edgar Wright opined that she would indeed make an excellent Doreen Green — and he even volunteered a possible plot.
https://twitter.com/edgarwright/status/760988905885822976
In this movie you have to fight all those other characters. Deal?
— edgarwright (@edgarwright) August 4, 2016
Purser is certainly a closer match the the Erica Henderson version of the character that has been so popular the past few years. But Anna Kendrick has a longer resume and is a fairly close match to every version of Squirrel Girl except the one Henderson draws. We’d be pretty happy with either choice.
So Marvel has talented actors crawling out of the woodwork asking to play a character in a movie that has not been announced. Squirrel Girl would be an excellent opportunity to insert some Deadpool-style meta humor into the Marvel Cinematic Universe while at the same time pushing the most family friendly hero that either studio has tried.
We think that this is the type of genre expanding movie that superhero movies need in order to continue to grow in the coming years. So, c’mon Marvel. Make it happen.