The upcoming Captain Marvel movie will be taking things back to the 1990s, when Phil Coulson and Nick Fury first crossed paths with the MCU’s most powerful hero. But while Clark Gregg and Samuel L. Jackson have each been digitally de-aged for their respective roles, Brie Larson is looking like her usual self, and since it’s generally assumed that she won’t be getting twenty years’ worth of aging effects for Avengers 4, the question is raised of why Carol Danvers doesn’t seem to get older.
With the film’s latest trailer, however, it seems we have a pretty straightforward answer, and it comes courtesy of Annette Bening’s unnamed character. The 20th Century Women star plays a Kree who reportedly rescued Carol and gave her some extraordinary abilities. As she explains to Captain Marvel in the new footage:
“We made you one of us. So you could live longer, stronger, superior.”
Well, there you have it. Though Carol was born human, her Kree DNA slows down her aging process, making it only natural that she’d look more or less the same after twenty-plus years.
Of course, while this explanation ensures that Carol’s first solo movie probably isn’t going to end with its title character stepping into a time vortex and emerging in the present day (or whatever fan theory you might’ve read), it’s still unclear what exactly she’s been doing for the last couple of decades.
The ongoing Captain Marvel Prelude comic has at least offered a little context, showing us how Nick Fury has been regarding Carol as a last resort that he hopefully won’t ever need, but it’s likely that we’ll only get the full picture of why he’s so reluctant to give this heroine a call when the film hits theaters on March 8th, 2019.
