Marvel Rivals features some of the biggest stars in the comic book universe, and then - some other ones. Alongside household names such as Captain America and The Hulk are some seriously deep cuts, even for comic book fans.
Almost every single character that is available to be played has been featured in a show and/or movie belonging to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This makes them recognizable and known to the audience, only upping the desire for fans to play them in games like Rivals.
Cloak and Dagger have featured in their own series plus they have cameos in the MCU-adjacent X-Men '97, Peni Parker has been featured in the Spiderverse movies, and even Jeff the Landshark has his own series of mini-animations that have caught the audience's attention. Yet there are two characters who have not recieved this sort of treatment: Iron Fist and Luna Snow.
Now, fans could argue the title Iron Fist is known to those who have seen the Defenders and adjacent shows with the previous owner of the mantle billionaire Danny Rand, but even within the comics, the character Lin Lie has only been around for a short number of years and a very few of those have involved him taking up the mantle Iron Fist.
The popularity of this pair of characters is small within the comics community, and in fact, Luna Snow may be more recognizable as a potentially playable character in the mobile game Marvel's Future Fight in which her character was originally created for. She even has songs available on Spotify and other streaming services from the game alone, and yet her popularity remains low. The same goes for this iteration of Iron Fist. Each Lin Lie and Luna Snow have under 50 comic appearances, which, for reference, Tony Stark has 3,621 appearances according to the Marvel Fandom wiki. So why are these two characters featured in Rivals, and what makes them so special?
Well, it's hard to say for sure. Lin Lie began as a snobby, sarcastic teenager under the name Swordmaster, though it took from his debut appearance until the first New Agents of Atlas book written by Greg Pak for him to officially train with a sword under the guidance of Shang-Chi, a character who would have been a much more recognizable figure had he been placed in Rivals in Lin Lie's place.
Lin Lie began his crimefighting career as Swordmaster, but after his mystical sword was shattered, he ends up becoming the new Iron Fist in Volume 6 of that martial arts themed comic.
Luna Snow, real name Seol Hee, has even less development than the slightly rushed storylines featuring the new Iron Fist. Many of her appearances are no more than background, wordless cameos. Her first appearance, being based off her initial inclusion as an original character in Marvel's Future Fight, shows her forming a Kpop band 4L1T and using the stage name "Luna", only for their first opening performance to be attacked by A.I.M., where a mishap resulted in her getting powers, as shown in Future Fight Firsts: Luna Snow . Sometime after, she joins a team called the Agents of Atlas, ironically becoming teammates with pre-Iron Fist, Lin Lie.
Since the last issue featuring the team Agents of Atlas, there has been very little appearances nor development for either of these characters. Lin Lie has gone on to become Iron Fist, yet even his stories under this new superhero name have been far and few.
So then, why would these two characters be included in Rivals? Ask an average comics reader, and they will likely only know these names from the game and not the comics they get periodically featured in.
These characters are generally unknown, have had little comic appearances since before Rivals was released, neither have been mentioned much by writers who have written them in the past, and they could easily be replaced by other, more known characters.
It could be an inner reference to Future Fight, but even then, Lin Lie was not created within that game as Luna Snow was, but doing so would not make sense. If they wanted to include a recognizable name like Iron Fist, they could have gone with Danny Rand. So what is the purpose of these two lesser known characters being amongst the ranks of popularized characters such as Captain America and Thor?
Would the only reason be for diversity? Peni Parker is Japanese. I won't even go into the difficulties behind Psylocke nor Namor. Lin Lie is Chinese, and Luna Snow is Korean. Would this be the reason behind their otherwise strange inclusion to the game?
Could it all be a simple diversity play? Or is it something more? Something building on the rumors of a new Iron Fist in the shakily announced Shang-Chi sequel that may never come to be, or murmurs of comics that never got written and completed?
Maybe we'll never figure it out, but knowing just a bit more about the characters few people of neither comic nor movie backgrounds have heard of prior to Rivals may be just as helpful.
And, maybe, that was their intention all along.