
"What the hell is going on?!" splutters Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury early on in The Marvels. It’s a sentiment certain to be shared by more than one audience member during Nia DaCosta’s film, a follow-up to 2019’s Captain Marvel (by way of Disney+ TV series WandaVision and Ms. Marvel) that struggles to stay coherent for a good deal of its relatively brief running time.
Essentially Freaky Friday in space, the latest addition to the MCU canon would appear, in theory, to have a straightforward premise: one that sees Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), her No. 1 fan Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani) and her de facto niece Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) swap places every time they deploy their light-based powers.