The Original Captain Marvel
27 years after having to back out of the role of Catwoman in 1992’s Batman Returns, Annette Bening finally makes her superhero movie debut in Captain Marvel. Initially, she appears as the form of the Supreme Intelligence, the Kree’s A.I. ruler, but later it’s revealed who she used to be: a Kree scientist called Mar-Vell, known on Earth as Dr. Wendy Lawson.
Yes, though we assumed that Jude Law would be playing Mar-Vell in the movie, Marvel Studios actually decided to gender-swap the character, meaning that Bening’s playing the hero known in the comics as the original Captain Marvel. First appearing in the 1970s, Mar-Vell was a Kree who acclimatized to Earth and went by the alias Dr. Walter Lawson. It wasn’t until later that Carol Danvers became his successor Miss Marvel, only adopting his former mantle in 2012.
The MCU’s Wendy Lawson wasn’t a superhero but she did share Carol’s courageous spirit and thirst to end the fighting between the Kree and the Skrulls, secretly finding sanctuary for Talos’ family and their people on board a spaceship in Earth’s orbit.
Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S.
As part of the reveal of Carol’s past, we learn that her mentor Dr. Wendy Lawson was in charge of Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S., a joint effort between NASA and Air Force to study the Tesseract in a bid to create lightspeed space travel. Lawson’s personal connection to the project was the hope that she could end the Kree/Skrull war.
Though Lawson was murdered by Jude Law’s Yon-Rogg, Marvel fans know that Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. didn’t end with her. P.E.G.A.S.U.S. is the name of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s investigation into how to harness to power of the Tesseract. It was first given a namecheck by Tony Stark in Iron Man 2 before he saw it in action in The Avengers.
The project was rendered defunct when Loki stormed the P.E.G.A.S.U.S. facility and stole the Space Stone from S.H.I.E.L.D., but we later learn in that movie that Fury was also looking to make weapons using the Infinity Stones’ power. We’re not sure Lawson would be best pleased that he was using her work to incite more war.