Monica Rambeau is the daughter of Carol Danvers’ old fellow pilot and friend, Maria Rambeau, and, years after meeting Captain Marvel as a child, Monica would follow in her mother’s footsteps to join S.W.O.R.D. This would end up putting her in contact with the Scarlet Witch, and subjecting her to the Hex, changing her DNA and granting her astounding abilities, and creating a new superhero.
But, with her comic book character having had so many aliases, who will she be in the MCU?
Where we first met Monica
Monica Rambeau was first introduced in the comics in The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #16, in October 1982. Her origin story, like many things that have transitioned from comic to screen, changed drastically for the MCU. In the comics, Monica gains her powers when she is hit by a wall of extradimensional energy produced by an energy disruptor weapon, very similar in fact to how on-screen Carol Danvers got her powers.
The MCU’s Monica, meanwhile, gains her powers in WandaVision, when she goes through Wanda’s reality-bending Hex borders three times, permanently altering her DNA.
What was Monica known as in the comics?
In the comics, Monica’s first superhero name was actually Captain Marvel, even though the alias had already been used by the late Kree hero, Mar-Vell. She kept the moniker for some time, joining the Avengers and even leading them under it. She later changed it to Photon, then Pulsar, and finally Spectrum.
Due to the symbol used in the logo for The Marvels, many came to believe that she would be going by the name Spectrum, her most recent name in the comics. In spite of this, there is stronger evidence that she has decided to go by the name Photon.
Another fact that pointed towards her using Photon is that it was her mother’s call sign from when she was a pilot in Captain Marvel — Maria “Photon” Rambeau (think Top Gun nicknames, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell and Nick “Goose” Bradshaw). Because Carol Danvers’ energy blasts from her hands are called Photon blasts, people may confuse the name with having been adopted from Captain Marvel when in fact it is to honor her mother.
In an attempt to bridge the gap between Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios, Monica Rambeau received her first solo comic titled Monica Rambeau: Photon. It was a five-issue limited series that began on Dec. 7, 2022. It was about time for a character who has led the Avengers in the past.
Given how much it made sense for Marvel to go with Photon as her superhero name, it is no surprise that that is exactly what she ended up with.
