In Avengers: Endgame, Marvel Cinematic Universe fans got to see Brie Larson's Carol Danvers head to her home planet and hang out for a bit with Earth's Mightiest Heroes... but the reality in the canon is that she has been off-world9 for quite a long time. As depicted in Captain Marvel, she left Earth in the year 1995, and she apparently wasn't able to return for quite a while – as evidenced by her awkward relationship with Teyonah Parris' Monica Rambeau.
So where has Captain Marvel been since she left Earth in the 1990s? That was a question that director Nia DaCosta encountered in the development of the new film The Marvels, and she has explained that it was very important for her to provide fans with some real answers. I spoke with the filmmaker this past weekend during the Los Angeles press day for the new MCU blockbuster, and she told me how she approached the big gaps in the character's timeline:
That was really important to me. I was like, we gotta kind of see what she's been up to for the past 30 years. And and so we visit a couple of places, and we see some familiar types of people like the Skrull and the Kree, and then we meet some other new kinds of people just to show like what she's been up to: why she left Monica behind and also how important she is to so many people.
Captain Marvel originally left Earth on a mission to help the Skrulls find a new home world and end the Kree-Skrull War... but her responsibilities apparently didn't end there. Her interstellar adventures saw her visit new planets and encounter new civilizations, and it seems that she felt a responsibility to use her abilities and help them with their problems. Past evidence of this behavior is featured in Avengers: Endgame – specifically the scene when she explains that she has been caring for multiple worlds after The Blip.
Thanks to Nia DaCosta's efforts (alongside co-writers Megan McDonnell and Elissa Karasik), The Marvels will take us to some of the worlds that Captain Marvel has supported, informing us about her past in the process... but not lost in the mix will also be her dealing with one of her biggest issues: her relationship with Monica. When Monica was a child, "Aunt Carol" promised her that she would return and visit, but that turned out to be a lie. The conflict was previously teased in WandaVision (where Teyonah Parris made her debut as adult Monica and became a superhero herself), but The Marvels will bring it front and center.
It won't be much longer until fans everywhere get the chance to learn about Captain Marvel's mysterious past, as The Marvels will be in theaters everywhere this Friday, November 1. Stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for a whole lot more coverage of the film – including more from my interview with Nia DaCosta – and keep track of everything going on in the MCU with our Upcoming Marvel Movies and Upcoming Marvel TV guides.
