After Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk were largely standalone, Iron Man 2 was the first movie in the MCU that started doing the heavy lifting to set up what was to come in The Avengers. In fact, even the throwaway references have turned out to be important.
If you’ll recall, in one scene, Tony Stark asks JARVIS to fetch him the files on Projects Goliath, Exodus and Pegasus. We’re still waiting for Exodus and Goliath was finally explained last year in Ant-Man and the Wasp. And as for Pegasus, well, Captain Marvel has now fleshed out more details on it.
It’s revealed in the movie that Pegasus was a collaboration between NASA and the U.S. Air Force to develop a light-speed engine. The driving force of the project was Dr. Wendy Lawson AKA the Kree defector Mar-Vell, who was trying to find a way to stop the war between her people and the apparently innocent Skrulls. What’s more, the energy source of the project is the Tesseract AKA the Space Stone.
Of course, Pegasus also featured in The Avengers, as the Pegasus facility was where Loki arrived at the beginning of the movie, pinching the Tesseract and going off to cause general mayhem. Fans are left to infer then that Nick Fury restarted the Pegasus project with S.H.I.E.L.D. following the events of CM.Â
But why the callback to Phase One? Well, ComicBook.com spoke with Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige who explained that this was done as a way of tying Carol Danvers into the early days of the MCU.
“Pegasus was name dropped as you very impressively remember in Iron Man 2, then it’s also at the top of Avengers. And it was early on tying her into that early MCU. What do we know about the period of the MCU in the years before Iron Man? Well, the Tesseract and Pegasus. were part of it. And then also you’re seeing another side of that same facility was interesting.”
Feige was then asked if there was any chance that Project Exodus could be explained in the future of the franchise. “We’ll see,” was the producer’s intriguing reply.
Tell us, what did you think of Captain Marvel? Did you enjoy it? Let us know in the comments section down below.
