Captain Marvel is just a few days away from making her MCU debut, but if Joss Whedon had been given his way a few years ago, then Carol Danvers would’ve been brought into the superhero saga as far back as 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron.
When it was first announced in October 2014 that Captain Marvel would be part of the MCU’s Phase 3 slate, fans quickly launched into speculation mode around the question of how the character might be introduced. For a while, there was even a rumor going round that the heroine would feature in the second Avengers film, and in a 2015 interview with Birth.Movies.Death., Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige revealed that the hearsay had some basis in an early Age of Ultron script:
“[Captain Marvel] was in a draft. But to me, it would have done that character a disservice, to meet her fully formed, in a costume and part of the Avengers already when 99% of the audience would go, ‘Who is that?’ It’s just not the way we’ve done it before… The way we reveal Scarlet Witch [in costume] at the end of the movie? Those were Captain Marvel plate shots. Joss said, ‘We’ll cast her later!’ And I said, ‘Yeah Joss, we’ll cast her later.’ [Whispers to an invisible associate who isn’t Joss] ‘We’re not putting her in there!’
Finally Joss was like ‘Let’s use those plates to let Scarlet Witch fly into frame, give her a big entrance?’ And that makes sense – she’s come to their side, and she deserves the cool intro, which will feed into another movie we start shooting in a few weeks.”
Funnily enough, though Feige didn’t care much for Whedon’s suggestion, Carol Danvers is scheduled nonetheless to make her arrival in the present-day MCU as a fully-formed hero, just as Whedon had in mind. Of course, the big difference here is that the character will first be getting a ‘90s-based origin story in the form of Captain Marvel.
From the sound of things, Marvel Studios is already counting on Carol to be the new face of the MCU, putting a little pressure on her first movie to make a strong impression with filmgoers. If the pre-sales and the reactions from early viewers are anything to by, however, then Captain Marvel should do just fine when it hits theaters on March 8th. After that, the MCU’s most powerful hero will be meeting up with her peers when Avengers: Endgame comes out on April 26th, 2019.
