'Captain Marvel': 7 Big MCU Questions After the Movie
Captain Marvel tells the origin story of one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's most powerful [...]
What Are Carol's Powers?
The biggest mystery of Captain Marvel is how Carol Danvers got the cosmic power that distinguishes her from humans and Kree alike, but the film admittedly doesn't do a great job explaining those powers.
The combination of Mar-Vell's unique abilities and the energy of the Tesseract/Space Stone are hinted to be the dual sources of Carol's powers. We know she has photon blasts, and also learns skills like flight and energy manipulation along the way, and she can "go binary," giving herself a major power boost. A final shot of Carol warping into space, plus a mid-credits scene of her appearing in Avengers HQ, both suggest that Captain Marvel may have some fraction of the Space Stone's power, as well. That could be a crucial detail for Avengers: Endgame's story....
How did Mar-Vell Get the Tesseract?
Captain Marvel pulled a fast one on Marvel fans, by revealing that Annette Bening was not just playing the Kree's Supreme Intelligence, but also a gender-bent version of iconic Marvel superhero Mar-Vell, as well. The reveal of Bening as Mar-Vell is so truncated in the overall storyline of the film that we're left with massive questions about her time in the MCU. First and foremost: how did Mar-Vell first get the Tesseract?
The Tesseract/Space Stone went from the Red Skull's possession during WWII to being lost in the ocean when Captain America crashed the Skull's war bird plane, saving millions of lives. Howard Stark fished it out of the ocean after WWII, where it presumably ended up in the possession of Peggy Carter's early version of SHIELD - or so we thought. There's a big missing piece about how The Tesseract went from Howard Stark to Mar-Vell and Project Pegasus, and it's a story we definitely need told sooner before later.
What happened to Carol's Family?
Another big mystery of Captain Marvel was the origin story of Carol Danvers before she lost all memory of her life on Earth. While the film reveals pieces of that origin in some key flashback sequences, there is a major matter that's only implied and never really explored: what happened with Carol and her parents?
It's clear from the hinted backstory that something happened to Carol's mother, and that her father wasn't the most positive influence in her life (to put it mildly). However, what exactly happened to shatter Carol's true family and send her into military service (while starting a new surrogate family with Maria and Monica Rambeau), remains to be seen.
What Made Mar-Vell Defect?
Going hand-in-hand with the story of Mar-Vell's time on Earth, and how she obtained the Tesseract, is the question of what made the Kree spy defect from the empire in the first place.
Not only did Mar-Vell break from a culture that favors the collective over the individual (in which she was something of a prominent figure), she also managed to take up allegiance with that culture's sworn enemy, The Skrulls. That is a monumental shift in both personality and personal belief, and one that's weighty enough to deserve some kind of proper dramatic exploration. Maybe a Disney+ series?
What Does the Supreme Intelligence Really Look like?
One of the first big Captain Marvel reveals is that the Kree Empire leader, The Supreme Intelligence, only appears to Kree citizens by way of a mind-meld, in which The Intelligence takes the form of whatever person is most meaningful to the person it is conversing with.
As we learn by the end of the film, the Intelligence's mind games are a nifty little way to maintain control over its people (or its prisoners, like Carol Danvers) - but there is still a true form to the entity, which we haven't seen yet. In the comics, the Intelligence is a giant green face with tentacle hair and (at times) multiple eyes; no telling what the Marvel Studios design team may come up with for the MCU version.
How does Carol Bring Down the Kree Empire?
The ending of Captain Marvel leaves a massive amount of space (literal and figurative) between Carol defeating the Kree and taking the surviving Skrulls to the far reaches of the universe, and the splintered and far more subdued version of The Kree Empire we saw in Guardians of the Galaxy.
Now that we know that Ronan, Yon-Rogg, and the Supreme Intelligence all realize the grave threat Carol Danvers posses to the Kree Empire, the question is how Carol's conflict with the Kree effectively brings down the Empire, and sends Ronan down the path of separatist fanatic. The MCU's Kree-Srull War is far from over...
Who Is Talos' Daughter?
This isn't so much a question left dangling by Captain Marvel's storyline, as it is a fan theory question inspired by the film. It's long been held that Marvel Studios could be building the MCU to a major crossover event based on the "Secret Invasion" storyline, and Captain Marvel may provide the first major clue to that, without a lot of fans even noticing!
The climatic act of the film sees Carol reunite Skrull commander Talos with his family, who have been hiding on Mar-Vell's secret space lab for six years. Talos' greatest joy is finding his young daughter, who is just a child at the time, and that's where things get interesting. In the comics, the Skrull Secret Invasion of Earth is led by a fanatical separatist princess named Veranke, who had been banished from the homeworld for preaching that the Skrulls needed to conquer Earth as a new homeworld. That's led a lot of fans to the idea that Talos' daughter's experiences on Earth (and fleeing it), will eventually have her grow into the MCU version of Veranke.
Marvel's Kevin Feige has already hinted that going forward, we'll meet different types of Skrulls in future MCU stories, so is this possible? It most certainly is.
Avengers: Infinity War is now available on home video, and Captain Marvel is now in theaters. Upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movies include Avengers: Endgame on April 26th, and Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5th.
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