Captain Marvel Directors Had Another Explanation For How Fury Lost His Eye

“Last time I trusted someone, I lost an eye.”

Longtime Marvel fans might remember when S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nick Fury uttered that iconic line all the way back in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. For the longest time, MCU enthusiasts speculated on what he could have meant, and since then, thousands of fan theories attempted to fill in the gaps.

Thankfully, Captain Marvel shed some light on that matter. Taking place in the ’90s, the prequel/origin story provided critical background info on S.H.I.E.L.D., the ongoing war between the Skrulls and the Kree, and of course, the mystery behind Fury’s missing eye. Oddly enough, the answer to everyone’s question was hidden in plain sight.

As it turns out, the culprit was none other than Goose the Cat, who, it reality, was not a common household pet but rather, a Flerken. Unfortunately, while many of the film’s Skrull characters kept their distance from the seemingly benign Goose, Nick Fury was taken by the animal’s adorableness; a move which eventually cost him his left eye.

As it turns out though, Captain Marvel directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck had envisioned a few other ways that particular mystery could have played out, though they ultimately settled on putting the blame squarely on Goose. As reported by ComicBookMovie, one of the other major frontrunners was to have Nick lose his eye during a fight with the Skrulls. They eventually ditched this idea though after it seemed a little too obvious.

“There were definitely a lot of discussions and that was not the first idea on the table. You’re probably going to ask me what some of the other ideas were and I don’t know if I can tell you that, not because I’m hiding anything, but because there were just so many absurd ideas we had. There was a strong contender for a while that a fight with the Skrulls seemed like the most obvious choice but then the more we thought about it, it just became too obvious.”

Boden also added that the explanation they settled on had another upside. Needless to say, losing your eye from a “cat” scratch is rather embarrassing, and as a result, Nick Fury decided to keep the details under wraps, spawning a myth which carried on for decades to come. Personally, we would love to see some of Boden and Fleck’s other explanations – here’s hoping that the pair reveal more info on the DVD and Blu-Ray versions of Captain Marvel.