The Marvels is here, and with it, a bunch of updates on just what is going on in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, from Earth, to space, and beyond. But while much of the team-up movie’s big beats are neatly wrapped up by its brisk end, there are plenty of questions we have left over…
Did All of the Tarnax IV Skrulls go to New Asgard?
In the immediate aftermath of Dar-Benn sucking out the atmosphere on Tarnax IV, we see their ruler and a small group of Skrull refugees on Carol’s ship whisked away via the Bifrost by King Valkyrie. But… there was more than one ship that managed to escape the world amid Dar-Benn’s assault. Where did they go? Did they also get invited to New Asgard? After the events of Secret Invasion is Earth at large suddenly just totally fine with a bunch of Skrulls showing up in Norway? Or will they now be living in secret again?
What Happened to Aladna?
This honestly might be the biggest and wildest fallout of The Marvels. The second act of the film is built entirely around Kamala, Carol, and Monica trying to protect Aladna from Dar-Benn’s water heist, but they ultimately fail and have to escape mid-assault while she uses the other Noor Bangle’s powers to suck up Aladna’s oceans and dump them onto Hala.
Carol notes before the Aladna excursion that the planet is mostly water, so there’s still a chance the world isn’t completely dried up by Dar-Benn’s attack. But that’s still a huge disruption to its eco system, and presumably the Kree were still, y’know, assaulting their world. Hala still has that water at the end of the movie, so is Carol’s second home—and her husband-of-convenience—actually all right? Did… no one go check?
What’s Actually Happened in the Fox X-Men Universe?
The film’s big post-credit tease has us learn that the universe Monica stranded herself in to seal the gateway breach is none other than that of Fox’s X-Men movies. But how much of those movies has actually happened by the time of The Marvels? Clearly not Logan, considering the X-Men and Charles, who gets namechecked by Beast, are still very much alive and kicking. Same goes for the timeline shenanigans that lead to Days of Future Past’s dark future.
Are we after The Last Stand and the two Deadpool movies? In fact, if Logan somehow “matters” to Deadpool 3, and Deadpool 3 is now an MCU movie as it’s been repeatedly said so far, will we get multiversal shenanigans now that the Fox X-Men universe is firmly established askance to the prime MCU reality?
Why Is Maria Rambeau Binary in That Universe?
The other big shock Monica faces waking up from her ordeal, other than having noted comics war criminal Henry “Hank” McCoy up in her grill, is that right beside her in the medbay is Maria Rambeau—except, in this universe she is not Monica’s mother, and is in fact the superhero Binary.
Unlike in our reality, in this universe was it Maria who got to the crash site first and got superpowers? If Binary exists as a hero in the Fox X-Men reality, does Captain Marvel at all? And perhaps, building off of that…
Is Carol Danvers a Multiversal Anomaly When It Comes to Captains Marvel?
In the comics, Binary is the superhero identity of Carol Danvers in the ‘80s, when she was a close ally of the X-Men and had previously had her abilities as Ms. Marvel depowered—and was in fact her de facto identity for much of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Give or take, she still has had those cosmic abilities on top of her usual ones ever since she returned to the Ms., and eventually Captain, Marvel mantles.
Which means on film at least, we have now seen more universes where Maria Rambeau became Captain Marvel than we have ones where Carol Danvers is, between Binary and the Captain Marvel glimpsed in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Sure, in What If season one we did get one alternate world where Carol was still Captain Marvel, but it’s very interesting that on the big screen so far Maria has consistently filled the multiversal mantle more than Carol has. Simply a convenient way to keep Lashana Lynch around, or will there be more to it?
Was Dar-Benn Creating Incursions?
Dar-Benn’s ability to punch new gateways into the interstellar network didn’t just threaten to destabilize that network—and presumably upend the balance of Marvel’s cosmic state by severely damaging space travel—but started to punch holes in the fabric of reality itself, hence why Monica gets trapped in another universe altogether in the film’s climax. But what we learned about incursions—the collision of two universe resulting in the destruction of one or both—previously was that they were, specifically, the product of extensive multiversal travel.
If Dar-Benn was simply creating new nodes in the gateway network, is that really enough to have kicked off a potential incursion? Was it using the Noor Bangle specifically to do so that created the interdimensional cracks? Did Dar-Benn even realise that she was opening access to entire other realities instead of just normal teleportation?
How Will Monica Get Home?
Which leads to the bigger question about how Monica can get home, if the barriers between the Fox X-Men-verse and the main MCU reality are already thin enough that Dar-Benn’s shenanigans could kick off a potential incursion. Given that Beast implies that people in his reality are at least aware of alternate universes, travel between them still seems pretty rare.
Sure Monica now knows she has the power, given enough energy, to seal those breaches (which will no doubt come in handy by the time we get to Avengers: Secret Wars), but would she willingly threaten to breach a hole in two universes just to get back?
What Will Happen to SABER?
With the surges across the gateway network over after Dar-Benn’s defeat, the threat to SABER’s orbital station is pretty much over, give or take a damaged space elevator and quite a few personnel covered in Flerken spittle (more on that later). But considering this is now Nick Fury’s third extra-governmental alien/superpower taskforce, and also the third one that has seemingly come to the verge of blowing up in everyone’s faces (if not literally blowing up quite yet), will SABER be sticking around in a way neither SHIELD nor SWORD could?
Who Else Is on Kamala’s Young Avengers List?
The Marvels concludes with its own cute homage to the first MCU post-credits stinger: Kamala Khan, emerging from the shadows, to enlist someone into her own Avengers Initiative: in this case Hawkeye’s Kate Bishop. Considering she’s going off of SABER files for notable young heroes, who else is potentially on her roster? Multiverse of Madness’ America Chavez is an obvious choice, of course. But is Peter Parker young enough in the MCU to be a Young Avenger? Who are Kamala’s other options? Have we even met them yet?
Are the Kree Cosmic Allies Now?
A big part of Carol’s arc in The Marvels is her grappling with destroying the Supreme Intelligence on Hala, and then promptly peacing out—kickstarting the Kree Civil War and the degradation of Hala’s star, setting the stage for Dar-Benn’s radicalized ascendance as Suprema. But now that Carol has tried to prove herself against the “Annihilator” moniker the Kree remnants gave her by re-stabilizing Hala’s star, is what is left of the Kree Empire now going to be a force for good in the Marvel cosmos? Is Carol going to actually stick around this time to help? Could the Kree now give way to other Marvel cosmic rivals, like the Shi’ar, going forward?
Who’s Keeping All Those Flerken?
Perhaps the most important question of all: who gets custody over Goose’s Flerken litter? Are they SABER property now that they’re technically part of the group’s emergency transport system? Did Kamala sneakily keep one for the Khan family? Is Carol going to keep a few on her ship? Will peckish Flerken be responsible for the next Snap-esque disaster in the MCU!? Time will tell.