The Marvel Cinematic Universe has just gotten a lot bigger, and a whole lot weirder in all
the best possible ways.
Captain Marvel managed to burn through a whole lot of story in a fun, fast-paced adventure
that sets up some exciting things for Avengers: Endgame.
But a movie jam-packed with this much awesome stuff might be a little tough to follow from
start to finish.
If you're looking to make sense of it all, look no further: let's photon blast our way
through the plot of Captain Marvel and explain just what the ending might mean.
Strap in: major spoilers ahead.
Captain Marvel begins on Hala, the homeworld of the Kree.
We're introduced to Vers a member of the planet's group of Starforce warriors, and she's been
having nightmares.
During training sessions with her mentor and commander, Yon-Rogg, we learn that Vers is
being trained to suppress her emotions, stop questioning her mysterious past, and fight
without using her powers, which seem to consist of having super-hot hands.
But Vers sucks at emotion suppressing, and she loves that whole hot-hand thing, so after
a few too many photon blasts, she's sent to be admonished by the Supreme Intelligence,
the artificial intelligence leader of the Kree.
The Supreme Intelligence appears differently to everyone, and in Vers' case, it appears
as a mysterious woman.
Good thing, too, because the Supreme Intelligence is actually butt ugly and also supremely gross.
"Okay, I may barf, but will someone tell me what that thing is?"
Soon, Vers, Yon-Rogg, and the rest of Starforce head off on a mission to rescue an undercover
Kree operative.
But the whole thing turns out to be a Skrull ambush and Vers is captured and interrogated
with a mind-scanning machine.
That's where we conveniently catch more glimpses of Vers' hidden memories, and the life she
used to live as an Air Force pilot on Earth.
After mustering every ounce of willpower, Vers escapes captivity, busts up a Skrull
ship, and zips down to Earth in an escape pod, followed by a squad of Skrull warriors,
led by a guy named Talos.
Their mission: find a hidden lightspeed engine developed by scientist Doctor Wendy Lawson.
After crash-landing into a Blockbuster video, Vers finds herself stuck on Earth.
So she places a long-distance call to her Starforce buddies to tell them she's going
after the Skrulls.
It isn't long before Vers encounters the local law enforcement and the feds in the form of
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD.
Just as Fury and his partner, Agent Phil Coulson, are about to arrest her for the crime of busting
holes into video stores, she's attacked by a Skrull sniper and gives chase.
Fury and Coulson likewise chase the chaser, and we soon discover that the guy riding shotgun
with Fury isn't Coulson at all...but a Skrull now dead who took his place.
Once the chase ends, Vers seeks answers from her recently unlocked memories, while Fury
joins her in her quest to discover the location of Doctor Lawson's engine.
Meanwhile, SHIELD has been infiltrated with at least one Skrull operative — Talos — who's
impersonating Fury's boss, Agent Keller.
Fury and Vers head to Project Pegasus to learn about Lawson's work.
There they encounter Lawson's cat named Goose a photo of Vers as a human fighter pilot,
and also those darned Skrulls.
A fight ensues, and Vers and Fury steal an experimental flight craft and head to Louisiana,
where they hope to get more answers about Vers' former life from Maria Rambeau, who
was the last person to see Lawson — and Vers — alive on Earth.
The reunion with Rambeau and her daughter Monica is bittersweet, as Vers learns her
true identity of Carol Danvers, a test pilot who was presumed dead six years ago after
a flight with Lawson's special project went wrong.
But even as Rambeau fills in the gaps about her life as Danvers, she's unable to remember
as much about her past as she'd like she can only retain glimpses of her memories, and
many of them are memories of various failures, like crashing a go-kart or falling from the
ropes course during her time in basic training.
While gathering more memories, however, the house is infiltrated by Talos and another
Skrull but this time, instead of threatening Danvers and her friends, Talos offers a truce,
and an audio recording of Danvers' "death."
Here's were we learn the truth: Danvers and Lawson were shot down by a Kree spacecraft,
piloted by none other than Yon-Rogg.
Yon-Rogg kills Lawson a secret Kree operative named Mar-Vell who'd gone rogue, and whose
experimental project was meant to peacefully end the Kree-Skrull war.
Danvers realizes she's been fighting for the wrong side, and the Kree had erased her memories
and abducted her from Earth after she gained her powers, a side-effect of her decision
to blow up the engine of Lawson's experimental craft to keep it out of Yon-Rogg's hands.
Danvers and the Skrulls strike a truce, and they fly off to find Mar-Vell's power source
before the Kree can snatch it away.
Once aboard Mar-Vell's orbiting space-lab, Danvers, Fury, Rambeau, Talos, and Goose find
her power source: the Tesseract, also known as the Space Stone.
But that isn't the only secret the lab holds, as Talos's family and a bunch of other Skrull
refugees are aboard, having lived there for the last six years.
The reunion is interrupted by Yon-Rogg and the rest of Starforce.
Danvers is captured and plugged into the Supreme Intelligence, who taunts Danvers about her
rediscovered humanity saying that being human sucks.
Wrong move!
Danvers overcomes the Supreme Intelligence, and breaks free of the Kree's suppression
of her superpowers.
Meanwhile, Fury and Talos beat up some Kree warriors with relative ease when you think
about the alleged Kree training an all… and make their escape from the lab.
In the process, Goose reveals himself to be not a cat, but rather a Flerken, an alien
sight-gag able to swallow magical Macguffins with the help of CGI tentacles.
The Tesseract is safe within his belly, and the gang leaves the lab to head back to Earth.
Danvers, now more powerful than ever, beats up Starforce, blasts Yon-Rogg, and explodes
some super-bombs deployed by Ronan the Accuser.
The Kree leave Earth, and Danvers does likewise to help the Skrull refugees find a new home
— and end the Kree-Skrull war for good.
She leaves Fury a souped up pager to be used only for emergencies.
Finally, in the mid-credits scene, we see her return to Earth 20 years later, where
the activated pager sits in Avengers headquarters.
So, now that we know what happens in the movie, what's it all mean?
During the beginning of the film, Yon-Rogg tells Danvers she needs to dampen her emotions
and control herself and her powers.
He tells her she needs to be the best version of herself — but the best version by his
standards.
As we see memories of her past, we see others telling Danvers what she must do — or what
she can't do.
She needs to slow down her go-kart.
She needs to quit basic training.
She needs to accept that flying is for men, not women.
And finally, during her last confrontation with the Supreme Intelligence, she needs to
accept that without the Kree, she's only human, and that's not enough to succeed.
Naturally, Danvers realizes that everyone's been dead wrong.
Being a woman never stopped her from being a kick-ass pilot, while being an emotional
human helped her beat all of Starforce single-handedly.
If you didn't catch the intended theme of the film by that point, No Doubt's "I'm Just
a Girl" playing during the fight scene with Starforce might have driven the point of the
movie home.
And by finally letting loose and embracing her humanity emotions and all Danvers discovers
she can literally fly, no plane or spaceship required.
In short, the ending of the movie proves that you shouldn't let anyone tell you that you
need to fight against your nature to be your best self your best self might be exactly
who you already were all along.
With six Infinity Stones floating around the edges of 21 different movies, no one would
blame you for having a hard time keeping track of all of them.
As such, you probably weren't the only one to gasp in recognition and confusion when
the Tesseract showed up in Mar-Vell's secret floating space lab.
The last time we saw that thing, it was sitting pretty on Thanos's Infinity Gauntlet, having
been liberated from Loki's possession at the beginning of Avengers: Infinity War.
And before that, it played important roles in the first Captain America and Avengers
movies.
So how'd it end up in Mar-Vell's possession...only to later be swallowed and coughed up by an
alien space cat?
For those who don't recall, the Tesseract zapped Red Skull into space at the end of
Captain America: The First Avenger.
Later, Howard Stark recovered the Tesseract on the bottom of the ocean while searching
for the lost Steve Rogers, and eventually it was given to SHIELD for safekeeping.
The next time the Tesseract appears is in the Avengers film, when Loki breaks into SHIELD
headquarters to steal it.
Its appearance in Captain Marvel fills in some blanks in terms of the Tesseract's importance
in shaping the MCU's future.
However, it does raise some questions: No one at SHIELD wondered where the glowing blue
space-cube had disappeared to?
What kind of paperwork did Doctor Lawson had to fill out in order to gain access to the
Tesseract for her experiments?
"Get ready for a large file transfer."
"How large?"
There are several cool ways Captain Marvel establishes itself within the MCU's greater
continuity.
The movie does a pretty good job of ensuring that little if anything happening in this
film contradicts any of the movies that take place after it.
That's a feat many prequels attempt and at which only a few really succeed.
For instance, we now know how Fury lost his eye, from a nasty scratch by the flerken Cat.
The scratch solves a longtime MCU mystery, while also helping us understand how and why
Fury is able to cope with all the weirdness of super-people without breaking a sweat.
He lost his eye to an alien tentacle-cat while escaping a bunch of murderous Kree soldiers.
He can handle a few Norse gods.
We also learn that the name for the Avengers Initiative was inspired by Carol Danvers,
whose call-sign as a pilot was "Avenger."
Fury's super-pager, which he used to contact Captain Marvel at the end of Avengers: Infinity
War, gets an origin story, too.
In all, Danvers and her quest had a definitive impact on Fury personally and the larger unfolding
of the MCU.
And yet, the pager still raises at least one huge question about what defines an "emergency"
to Nick Fury.
In Avengers, for instance, a wormhole opened over Manhattan and pooped out a bunch of alien
invaders.
The second Avengers movie featured a super-evil robot attempting a world takeover and an entire
city floating in the sky.
Those weren't emergencies?
MCU boss Kevin Feige offered an answer to that question the during the weekend of Captain
Marvel's release.
When asked by SlashFilm why Fury never hit the pager during those other crises, Feige
answered:
"How do you know he never hit it?
How do we know he never pushed it before?
We’ve never seen him push it before.
That doesn’t mean he never did."
The mid-credits scene in Captain Marvel gives us a preview of Avengers: Endgame.
Danvers swoops into Avengers HQ in response to Fury's pager, which has been sending its
signal into space since Infinity War's end.
It confirms that Captain Marvel will have a significant role in the restoration of half
the universe's population.
Good thing she wasn't dusted, too!
Beyond that, it's likely we'll get more adventures with Captain Marvel on Earth once Endgame's
credits roll.
While she's unlocked most, if not all of her pre-Kree memories, she still hasn't spent
time actually reacclimating to life on her homeworld.
The events of Captain Marvel take place in 1995, six years after her abduction.
Now she's returned home after another twenty years, though she still looks as young as
ever, thanks to her superpowered Kree blood.
And just like Captain America before her, Danvers is out of her own time, and we'll
probably see her struggling to reconnect after over a quarter century away from home.
Additionally, Monica Rambeau, Maria's daughter, probably has a role to play, based on the
character's history from the comics.
In 1982, she made her debut as a hero named Captain Marvel, only her origin story didn't
really have anything to do with Danvers, Mar-Vell, or the Kree.
In the MCU, though, she'll be 20 years older...and probably ready to either join Captain Marvel
on her next adventure, or become her own Captain Marvel further down the line.
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