Maya Hansen

Origin

Although a relatively new character, it is established through back-story that Maya Hansen met, and befriended Tony Stark in his early twenties at an emergent tech conference.

Creation

Maya Hansen was created by Warren Ellis and Adi Granov and first appeared in Iron Man #1(2005).

Mayor Story Arcs

Extremis

Years later Maya calls Tony when a sample of the Extremis Enhancile she's working on is stolen by domestic terrorists. Tony is able stop the Extremis enhanced terrorist with Maya's help by becoming Extremis enhanced himself. Tony then reveals Maya was responsible for allowing the terrorists to get their hands on Extremis to prove that Extremis worked, and to receive federal funding. Maya is then sent to prison where she receives a scar on her left cheek.

Later on Tony gets Maya out of jail when he needs her help to figure out how he's being controlled to assassinate specific people. Afterwards Maya is placed under Tony's custody and works under him for SHIELD, where they become romantically involved for a brief period.

After an incident where Maya and Tony's close friend Sal is killed by a biological threat that could have been stopped had Maya been allowed to continue her research on Extremis, Maya fakes her own death and accepts an offer to work for a secret government organization called Prometheus. Unknown to the government or Maya, the man in charge of Prometheus was actually the Mandarin. Mandarin planned on using an airborne version of the Extremis Enhancile to wipe out a majority of the human race, but before he could Tony had the Prometheus facility nuked with him and Maya still in it.

After the explosion Maya awoke believing she was in SHIELD custody and was deceived by the Mandarin into giving him the weaponized form of the Extremis Enhancile that he was after all along.

Other Media

Iron Man 3

As rumoured, the feature film sequel to the Iron Man franchise, Iron Man 3 will revolve around the Extremis story arc. The character of Maya Hansen is being portrayed by Rebecca Hall. According to early reports, the character will share much of the same history and role that she plays in the comics.