‘Captain Marvel’: Lashana Lynch Explains How Maria Deals With Carol’s Disappearance

Lashana Lynch’s Maria Rambeau is one of Carol’s best friends in Captain Marvel, and she recently broke down how the character tries to deal with Carol just up and vanishing.

As we’ve seen in the Captain Marvel trailers, Carol ends up having her memories tampered with by either the Skrulls or Kree after coming into contact with them and having her genetic structure changed. She then ends up as part of the Kree Starforce and doesn’t remember her time on Earth or Maria for that matter. As Lynch explained on the set of Captain Marvel, that’s not an easy thing to deal with for Maria, nor is the realization that your friend wasn’t dead after all.

“Her and Brie’s [Larson] character Carol Danvers are very close friends, they’re best friends, in fact,” Lynch said. “She had to go through a lot of grief when Carol disappeared and then suddenly she’s back, and she has to kind of reverse that grief and make it work for this, picking up of a friendship, which is kind of strange but ends up really beautifully. She’s just an incredible character to play. It’s nice to see someone on the page who doesn’t yet have a fully fleshed personality and who you can then inject wherever you want to. And that’s quite a treat, for a Marvel character, you know?”

While Lynch couldn’t give an exact timeline of how long Danvers has been gone from Earth, she did say it’s been quite a while.

“Oh, I don’t know if I’m allowed…a long time, a really long time, enough for me to say…enough for me to come out of denial and then think that maybe she is alive, and then no, actually she isn’t yet years have gone by, and she definitely isn’t alive. Do you know what I mean? Enough to go through that cycle,” Lynch said.

There seems to be a balance of flashbacks and present-day moments between the characters, and you will definitely get enough of the past to understand the deep friendship the two had before Carol vanished.

“You do get touches of moments to see how happy they were before and how happy they made each other,” Lynch said. “Because of that, when she comes back, you see why it affected her so much. You see why her death was such a big deal. And imagining my character now being the only female fighter pilot, African American as well, in the Air Force base would have been hell. So from her going from working with someone and actually being complete chums to being alone, and raising a child single-handedly with the help of their parents is a hellish experience and I could relate to that as well with having, losing someone myself. It’s hard. It’s not something…it’s a lot, isn’t it?”

Once Carol returns it will be a lot for Maria to take in, especially when you consider all the crazy things she returns with, including Skrulls, superpowers, the Kree, and more. So, how would Maria react to all that?

“Sarcastically,” Lynch said. “Sure. Okay. So I’m just meant to be, it’s just meant to be okay and just normal to me? Okay, sure. That is how she reacts. Like, I’m just frozen in time because the last memory I have of you is so fond and so normal and so graceful, that now you have a different like shell of strength that is great, but you need to also remember that you’re a human being, but I don’t quite know how to do that for you yet. So yeah, very sarcastically, mostly, but also takes to it very quickly. And one thing that Carol needs that Maria gives her is understanding. I can’t empathize with the fact that you have power, because I can’t. That was definitely Spider-Man. I can’t just do whatever she does, but I know what it feels like to feel lost, and trying to regain yourself after having a child, and feeling like I’ve lost a part of myself but gained another part of myself. I’m trying to find that balance in my mind. So she just uses the different parts of her life to understand where she’s coming from.”

We can’t wait to see more from this friendship when Captain Marvel hits the big screen on March 8th.