Yahoo News 5 major MCU questions that Captain Marvel will solve
As if it wasn't notable enough for being the first female-led Marvel movie, Captain Marvel also has a huge role to play in the past and the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Fans have already been poring over every detail released about Captain Marvel to see how it sets up Avengers: Endgame and the climax of the MCU as we know it. But that's not the only thing they should be looking out for as Brie Larson's solo movie is set to fill in some important blanks within the wider universe.
What blanks you ask? Well, step right up and see the MCU mysteries that Captain Marvel will resolve...
1. Where has she been?
Ever since Nick Fury used that pager at the very end of Avengers: Infinity War, fans have been wondering just where Captain Marvel's been all this time and why he hasn't contacted her before.
In reality, it's because Captain Marvel wouldn't have been in Marvel's plans way back when the first Avengers happened. However, it's still an issue that the movie has to address to avoid a continuity problem.
Marvel boss Kevin Feige has spoken about how powerful Captain Marvel is and that's why Fury contacted her as they were up against something "far bigger" than ever before. That's all well and good, but if she's so powerful, wouldn't you want her around for something like the Battle of New York? She could have sorted that right out.
It's been suggested that when Captain Marvel gave Fury the pager (and we've seen it in the first trailer), she could have explicitly stated just how bad things would have to get for Fury to contact her. Maybe she's in space and she didn't feel like popping down for every little skirmish.
Equally, she might have known that Thanos was going to be causing mischief at some point, so specifically told Fury to contact her when everyone was turning to dust.
"I think we will understand over the course of these movies why Fury makes the decisions that he does. He's always a mysterious guy and he always has his own reasons, but hopefully we can clarify some of that for the audience," executive producer Jonathan Schwartz told Collider about the pager.
It won't take much more than a line of dialogue in Captain Marvel to resolve this whole issue, but it will be answered. Marvel is just too savvy to not do so.
2. What happened to Nick Fury's eye?
Ever since Nick Fury made his MCU debut in Iron Man's post-credits scene, he's had an eyepatch over his left eye and some distinct scarring around it. While the comics have usually explained it as an injury sustained in World War II (comic-book Fury is much older than he looks), the movies to date have avoided revealing how it happened – until Captain Marvel came along, that is.
"You'll see, specifically, the origin of what happened to his eye," Samuel L Jackson recently confirmed, adding that Captain Marvel will delve into Fury's life in a way never seen before in the MCU.
"You'll find out that he does have a family. That's referenced. You don't see them, but they are referenced in another way," he outlined. "We get more of a backstory, and we get more of what turns him into this person that you originally meet in Iron Man."
Some fans have already joked that given Fury's closeness to Captain Marvel's Chewie (renamed Goose for the movie) in the second trailer will be what does for his eye, especially as Chewie is actually a cat-like alien called a Flerken.
Sadly, we think that will be wide of the mark, but you never know...
3. Who are the Skrulls?
Comic fans have known about the Skrulls for a while of course, but Captain Marvel will mark the long-awaited MCU arrival of the shapeshifting aliens.
The movie will draw on the classic Avengers story 'Kree/Skrull War' with Captain Marvel fighting on the side of the Kree (who we've already seen in the MCU in Guardians of the Galaxy and Agents of SHIELD). According to Schwartz, she is "dispatched on a mission to an alien planet to fight the Skrulls" which leads her to get captured by the Skrulls and eventually find herself on Earth.
This leads her to team up with Fury to battle a Skrull plot on Earth, likely the brainchild of Ben Mendelsohn's Skrull leader Talos who will take a "human form" during the movie. The MCU hasn't always closely followed the comics, so it'll be interesting to see what – if any – changes the MCU makes to its version of the Skrulls.
The introduction of the Skrulls appears to be setting up a major comic book event in the MCU called 'Secret Invasion' that could form the basis of Phase 4. Here, the shapeshifting aliens replaced key figures that led to paranoia among Marvel's heroes and eventually to all-out war.
It could be that Captain Marvel deals with the whole 'Secret Invasion' plot in one movie, but it feels like an ideal overarching story for Phase 4 once the Avengers have dealt with Thanos. Maybe we'll even get a tease that someone we thought we knew is actually a Skrull in Avengers: Endgame...
4. How important is the Quantum Realm?
Even though it was introduced eight movies ago in Ant-Man, we still don't really know too much about the Quantum Realm, other than it's clearly important within the MCU.
Scott Lang was stuck there the last we saw him, which has led fans to assume that it'll be key to how the dead Avengers will be brought back. Scott might even be stuck there because he's crucial to Doctor Strange's plan.
We know that the Quantum Realm will feature in Captain Marvel somehow and, intriguingly, Samuel L Jackson recently revealed that she is "one of the few people in the Marvel universe that can time travel".
It's long been suspected that the Quantum Realm could be used as the MCU's version of time travel and these two bits of evidence make us think Captain Marvel could show how. Perhaps we'll see her receive Fury's distress call in the movie and use the Quantum Realm to travel to the future from the '90s.
It would certainly be a hell of a way to amp up the excitement for Avengers: Endgame – as if it needed more hype.
5. What happened to Ronan and Korath?
OK, so maybe this isn't a major MCU question, given their appearance in Guardians of the Galaxy wasn't exactly beloved.
And yet, the appearance of Korath the Pursuer on the side of Starforce, alongside Captain Marvel, in the first images of the movie was intriguing. The movie will also mark the MCU return of Korath's Guardians of the Galaxy boss Ronan the Accuser, although he's not part of Starforce.
Maybe it'll turn out that they're bad all along or Starforce isn't what Captain Marvel thinks it is, but much like the movie will dig into the pasts of Nick Fury and Agent Coulson, we'll also see how they became the people we met in the first Guardians movie.
"It's kind of an earlier version of Ronan who has not become the radical zealot that we saw in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 1. So he has his own station in Kree society on Hala, and has his own role to play in the Kree military that intersects with Starforce in an interesting way," Schwartz told Collider.
Is meeting Ronan the reason for Korath turning to the 'dark side'? We'll find out in Captain Marvel.
Captain Marvel is released on March 8, while Avengers: Endgame is released on April 26.
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