‘I wanted it to feel as jarring for the audience as it is for them’: ‘The Marvels’ director ominously hints its central hook is confusing on purpose

The mere concept of the multiverse is confusing on its lonesome, and then when you throw power-swapping into the mix, there’s plenty of head-scratching potential. There’s already been some needling of The Marvels over the intricacies of how its central switcheroo works, but director Nia DaCosta has hinted that it’s entirely intentional and completely deliberate.

With Carol Danvers, Monica Rambeau, and Kamala Khan finding their abilities exchanging whenever one of them decides to power up, trying to keep track of who’s using which power when and why they’ve been stuck with the one they’re currently utilizing could hypothetically cause mass confusion, although DaCosta made it clear when speaking to Total Film that it was all part of the plan.

“I definitely wanted, because they’re so disoriented with the switching, for people to be inside of their experience. I wanted it to be very subjective; and each of them is doing very different things when the switching starts so, yeah, I wanted it to feel as jarring for the audience as it is for them.”

The second season of Loki has additionally opened the door to much consternation over its various expositional monologues detailing the ins, outs, who, what, when, where, and why of time in its many forms, and with the finale for the God of Mischief arriving in the same week as The Marvels, there might just be a large number of highly confused MCU fans with plenty of burning questions by the time the credits roll on both. Just remember, though, it’s supposed to be like this…