Captain Marvel is Setting Up Like Captain America and I Love It

First off, if you haven’t gone and seen Captain Marvel yet, go see it. It’s a very fun movie with a solid plot and plenty of tie-ins with the MCU at large.

However, I left the theater feeling a little cheated. Kevin Feige said that Captain Marvel will be the strongest hero in the MCU to date. Brie Larson even said that Captain Marvel can move planets. Although we get an impressive display of her powers at the end, I wasn’t sitting there thinking, “man, she’s so much stronger than Thor”. As I sat and thought more about the movie, I realized that it almost exactly parallels my favorite Marvel hero: Captain America.

The parallels are almost uncanny, and I think it means good things for Captain Marvel’s future.

First off, both movies are prequels, with Captain America taking place in the 40s and Captain Marvel in the 90s. Both movies heavily featured the tesseract. Both characters were in the military when they got their power from some outside source (Rogers from the Serum and Danvers from the explosion/Kree experiments). Both characters were initially held back from the fight, despite their protests.

Captain America was relegated to being a bonds salesman and Captain Marvel was being held back by Yon-Rogg and the device placed on her neck to subdue her powers. And finally, both characters were only just beginning to realize their powers at the end of their first movie. Steve went from beating up Hydra agents to things like keeping helicopters from taking off and holding back Thanos. Captain Marvel started to tap into her powers, learning to fly and learning how to go Binary.

So how does this bode well for Captain Marvel? Well Captain America was a solid MCU entry that set up for two great sequels. Winter Soldier and Civil War are two of the best MCU movies overall.

Captain Marvel looks to be following this formula. We have great sequel potential involving Ronan the Accuser or Yon-Rogg.

Many fans were upset that Ronan played such a small part in the movie. However, I think that that was Marvel’s way of introducing him to the non-MCU fans so that he can be set up as the main villain for Captain Marvel 2. After that, we could be set up for a mini-crossever event (just like Captain America: Civil War).

Secret invasion is a major comic book storyline, where it turns out that the Skrulls had been impersonating people on Earth for years, including major political powers and heroes. Some think that this could be the next major crossover event for the MCU. However, I think it has the potential to be a Captain Marvel movie, treated as a mini-Avengers movie (much like Civil War was).

So even though we didn’t get the full slate of Captain Marvel’s power, it’s okay. This movie was a very solid entry in the MCU and a great introduction to Carol Danvers prior to Endgame.

More importantly, it sets up some amazing sequels that can help shape the MCU, much like Captain America did with its sequels.

However, while Captain America helped shape the heroes’ earth based adventures, Captain Marvel could set up for cosmic side, with the potential for a Secret Invasion, Secret Wars, or Kree-Skrull war storyline. Regardless of what Marvel does with Carol in the future, it certainly is set up to be great.

-Stephen Brown III (@sbtrey23)