Captain Marvel being the ultimate MCU prequel has retconned a lot of things and it has told us how what came to be in the MCU. We needed to know why Nick Fury didn’t call Captain Marvel all this time, and that question was answered. We wanted an answer for how Fury lost his eye, and that was answered. We wanted a response for the Pager Sequence in Infinity War & we got exactly that. The film even gave us the origins of Project PEGASUS, or even “The Avenger Initiative”.
So there were quite a lot of mysteries that were unraveled in the film. But if you look at the other side of the film, there were so many things that we were left wanting to know more about. There were many things that the film did not explain us, and left lose hanging threads that would be tied in the sequels and the crossovers. So let’s get right into that. Spoilers will obviously follow, so read on once you’ve seen the film.
How do you set up a Secret Invasion now?
In a surprising turn of events, we see here that the Skrulls are not really the villains, but rather the victims of the laws imposed by the Supreme Dominant Power, i.e. the Kree. Their goal in the film was to find a safe home to take refuge. And so, Captain Marvel leaves with them in order to help them. They are not the bad guys which infiltrate and Conquer planets and Captain Marvel clearly supports them. So how do you set up a secret invasion storyline from here on?
Honestly, there are probably not enough Skrulls left to even invade an entire planet properly. Kevin Feige, for now, has kept the answer to a Secret Invasion vague, explaining the Skrulls’ Story arc in this film:
“Just like not all humans are bad, and not all humans are good, I think Skrulls probably have a variety of moralities amongst them. When they can do what they can do, it probably gets very tempting. So, it’s fun to have introduced this concept and see where it goes.”
So if an invasion were to really happen, then something would have to go extremely wrong in the two decades between Captain Marvel and Endgame. That is how the Skrulls will turn to villains again. Something like Thanos’ Snap could make them bad again, but even for that, first, they will have to repopulate enough to be able to carry an invasion, if there aren’t any more Skrulls in the galaxy in 1995.
What Happened to Minn-Erva?
In a climactic Quinjet chase sequence, we find Minn-Erva to be after the Skrulls in a flying Pod, but Maria Rambeau who clearly is an awesome pilot outsmarts her and shoots her aircraft leading to an explosion. Ideally, an explosion would kill a human, but the Kree are superior to humans. There was very less Screen time given to the Kree, and Minn-Erva in particular for anyone’s liking. She is an arch nemesis of Captain Marvel and we always suspected that we might see her set up as a pure villain in the sequels.
So did that explosion mean that she died on the spot? Or did she survive the blast? Perhaps if she would have, then a Blue Kree being on Earth all this time would have had made some kind of a buzz. So considering this, we should for now believe that Minn-Erva was just a minor villain and her arc was over with the crash. But how many times have dead people returned in the MCU?
Not enough of Hala
This has been a minor problem with many MCU films. 3 Thor movies, and we still don’t have a great idea of what kind of a place Asgard really was. Black Panther tried to explore Wakanda, but we didn’t get a whole lot of that. In Captain Marvel, we are brought to the Kree Planet of Hala, and we are shown this technologically advanced and superior planet with cars flying around, tall skyscrapers, and stuff like that, but we aren’t taken too deep into the planet for Captain Marvel’s story to happen. Perhaps another Captain Marvel film could tell us more about the planet, and that brings us to the next question.
What about Yon Rogg, Ronan & the Kree
There is a lot of unexplored history of the cosmic MCU world. We know the end result for what happens to Ronan, but there’s a huge time gap between Captain Marvel and the Guardians of the Galaxy. How did he and Korath end up being Kree fanatics? Did the Kree become more considerate with time, leaving the other planets be, and the likes of Ronan & Korath were all about dictatorship upon other planets, leading them to where we saw them in Guardians Vol.1?
What will be the fate of Yon Rogg? He said that he cannot leave emptyhanded to his planet and so Captain Marvel sent him back with a message that she is coming. We will surely have him show up in the future of the MCU, but his fate could give us a detailed look at the Kree Culture from the inside.
If the Captain Marvel sequel takes place post Avengers: Endgame then are we supposed to believe Yon Rogg was just sitting on Hala waiting for Carol for 2 decades? There’s clearly a lot of exploration to do, so don’t be shocked if another Captain Marvel movie actually takes place prior to the events of Avengers: Endgame. We have to know more about the Kree, how Ronan ended up where he did, and what’s next for Yon Rogg.
Where has Carol been all this time?
As mentioned above, at the end of the movie, we see her leave with the Skrulls in order to help them find a new home. But we need the answers for what she has been doing for more than 20 years in space. She warned Yon Rogg that she will follow to Hala to sort of end their regime and set things right. A sequel could be set up showing us that tying in the Skrulls somehow. Or the question about the whereabouts of Carol could be answered directly in Avengers: Endgame.
Perhaps we do get part of an answer in Avengers: Endgame as the description of new footage shown at Disney’s shareholder meeting has leaked, and it has Captain Marvel in it. We clearly saw Captain Marvel arrive at the Avengers Facility in the Mid Credits scene, and since Captain America still had his beard, we know that the scene took place at the start of the film.
To tie in the description of Avengers: Endgame footage with this, the Avengers including Nebula and Captain Marvel are talking about a plan to attack Thanos, and amidst the conversation Cap asks “what makes you think that we won’t lose this time?” and Carol replies, “This time you would have me.” Rhodey asks her “why didn’t you show up earlier?” and Carol replies “The other planets didn’t have the Avengers to help them like Earth”.
So there you have it, Carol was helping out other planets all this time, so we may just be told that, and a sequel would happen post Endgame. But we’d rather have all that shown that told. So let’s see how Marvel plans the sequel. Perhaps they could have one which gives us flashback sequences of Carol’s past life, and the past events of the Kree, if the sequel indeed gets set after Endgame. Let’s see.
Where is Goose the Cat?
Last we see Goose the Flerken Cat was when it throws up the Tesseract on Fury’s desk. But since it was on Earth, what has it been up to, or rather where has it been? Did it just grow old and die or did Fury actually lose an alien cat which is still out there on Earth somewhere? Perhaps we’ll find out in the future.
How Did Mar-Vell Get Her Hands on the Tesseract?
In the film, we found out that Mar-Vell was an undercover Kree Agent who was working under the guise of Dr. Wendy Lawson at SHIELD. Until the final act of the film, we weren’t shown what she was working on, but in her laboratory, which was actually in the orbit in space we found that she was actually creating a device using the Tesseract. We know that Howard Stark found the Tesseract after the Second World War ended, and it had been with SHIELD ever since.
So you would imagine that SHIELD would want to monitor it all times since it is the most powerful object known to man-kind present on Earth at that point of time. This begs us to ask the question that how exactly Mar-Vell got a 100% private access to it. To get that she would have had to spend years just getting such a high level of clearance!
What’s interesting is that she even built a Tesseract-powered aircraft, and also a device which was capable of hyperspace speed. Moreover, how did she manage to sneak it out of the planet? Sneaking the Skrulls into her laboratory was fine, but taking the Tesseract off the planet proves that SHIELD was filled with lackey incompetent fools who had the HYDRA turnover coming without even noticing.
Captain Marvel’s Powers?
This film had so much upon its plate that it was never going to meet all the expectations of everyone. Most of the above-mentioned questions are common questions that everyone had as they left the theatres. We did get to watch something pretty awesome but it wasn’t a complete package. There were a few things missing that could have been solved easily by adding a few more minutes of footage to the film. One of those missing aspects was the detailed explanation of how exactly did Captain Marvel get her powers, and what they are for that matter.
“Show and tell” is considered to be a good move, and most movies tell us but they do not show us. This film did the opposite as it showed us, but did not tell. We were shown that Captain Marvel got the Photon Blasts as a result of that accident. But the film didn’t get into too much detail with the accident.
