“Would you like to know what you really are?” That’s a query posed to Carol Danvers (played by Brie Larson) in the just-released second trailer for next year’s Captain Marvel. And it’s a variation on a question Marvel fans have been asking themselves for the last year or so: Just who is this big-screen Captain Marvel—and what role will she play in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as it readies to enter Phase 4?
Judging by the the new trailer, we at least know that Larson’s character will stay true to her comic-book roots. Her Danvers is an ace military pilot who gets caught up in an intergalactic battle between two species, the Krees and the Skrulls, resulting in her being gifted with extraordinary super-powers. (She also has an extraordinarily cool mohawk-like 'do, which makes a few quick cameos in the trailer). Captain Marvel takes place in the nineties, as Danvers is back on Earth, trying to make sense of how she got there. “I keep having these memories,” she tells Nick Fury (played by a digitally de-aged, two-eyed Samuel L. Jackson). “Something in my past is the key to all of this.”
We see quite a few glimpses of that past, including her rescue by the Krees—”a race of noble warrior-heroes,” she explains—who find her near-dead and devoid of memory. One of their leaders, played by Annette Bening, explains that Danvers was rebirthed as a Kree, so that she could live “longer, stronger, superior.” That explains why Captain Marvel can shoot bright blue bolts of energy from her hands: It's Krees' lightning!
Just how great those powers are, however, is a key question: Captain Marvel finds our hero facing down a new threat led by Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), a pointy-eared Skrull—a guy that can’t get no love from Brie, so a showdown is inevitable. We also see her taking to the subways to beat up an old woman suspected of a Skrull-in-disguise, and taking guidance from Kree mentor, played by Jude Law. But will Captain Marvel posses the kind of near-atomic powers she maintains in the comics—the kind of abilities that could, say, propel her forward in time and take on Thanos? For the Marvel fans who watched many of their favorite heroes vanquished last years by the Snap in Avengers: Infinity War, that’s one of the big head-scratchers of Captain Marvel: Once she finds out who she really is, but will be it enough to save the day?
We’ll know soon enough. Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the filmmakers behind such revered indie dramas as Half Nelson and Sugar, the supercharged Captain Marvel arrives March 8. That’s less than two months before the long-awaited Avengers: Infinity War follow-up—hopefully titled Avengers: Snap 2 It!—that will also feature Larson flying in for what promises to be more than just a cameo. Hopefully, the big screen ready for two meme-friendly superheroes named Carol.