Captain Marvel in Endgame – A Wrong Decision?

Making a billion dollars at the box office isn’t easy, but despite mixed reviews and quite some controversies, Marvel Studios’ Captain Marvel achieved the feat. I personally loved the film, but several people didn’t find it much engaging. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that it made a lots of it because of the subtle tease we saw at the end of Infinity War.

The hype for Endgame is such, that it has never been witnessed before. It is certainly the biggest movie event we’ve had in the last decade, topping the two part end to the Harry Potter world in 2011. It’s the cumulation of a 22 films, 11 years and 3 phases long Infinity Saga. If that wasn’t enough, the last film, Infinity War ended on a major cliffhanger, with the whole audience having their jaw dropped. Similar was the reaction during the post-credit scene of Ant-Man & the Wasp. And, the loud cheers the moment we saw Captain America on screen during the Captain Marvel post-credit scene told us a lot about just how excited the fans are for Endgame, if we didn’t know already.

This hype for Endgame had reflected in the box office results of Captain Marvel, making it such a big success. Though none of the Endgame promotional clips had showed us Carol with the rest of Avengers until after Captain Marvel was released, but Nick Fury trying to contact her the moment he realised that it’s an emergency during the Infinity War credit scenes told us that she will have a big role to play in the finale. Since we haven’t been introduced to her before, watching her first solo film became important to be well prepared for Endgame.

Now, the big question arises, did Marvel Studios commit a mistake in making her an important part of Endgame? There’s a lot of reason why this question can arise. I’ll talk about each of them here, so stick with me.

First, before Captain Marvel, the fans have been around for 20 movies, followed the characters, and have seen them develop as superheroes. Though Kevin Feige has said that the movie will focus on the original Avengers, and it wouldn’t be solely about Captain Marvel saving the day, but it’s hard to trust that. None of us want the one movie old superhero to take the lead, rather than others whose struggles and leadership we’ve seen in several solo and team-up films.

Carol isn’t someone who would follow orders, especially since she’s been visiting various planets to save them. This can be seen in her overconfidence, which is distinctly visible in the latest teaser. Someone with this big experience, and so many superpowers can’t possibly be there not to play a big role. Unless –

Unless, her overconfidence brings them down. Overconfidence can rarely give us desired results. It masks our sense of judgement of the opposition. And, Carol is undeniably underestimating Thanos’ power.

There’s a reason I further believe she will have a big and important role to play, and that is that she got her powers indirectly from the Space Stone itself. Infinity War established that only someone who gets their power from an Infinity Stone holds the power to destroy an Infinity Stone. Among the line-up, we also have Scarlet Witch who draws her power from one of the stones, but Captain Marvel is much more experienced than she is.

Scarlet Witch is still mastering her powers, (also, she’s dead), and the movies don’t really show her as powerful as she’s meant to be. While Kevin Feige and Brie Larson have openly admitted that Captain Marvel is the strongest superhero yet in MCU. Having such a strong person in the team, and making them a side-kick sounds almost impossible story structure wise. Say Justice League of example. I know the script was quite weak anyways, and Marvel wouldn’t repeat the mistake, but once Superman was back alive, there was hardly anything others needed to take care of. It became a one man show. Marvel is certainly clever about it, but it’ll require something else. She can’t be there at climax and not be the center of the action.

There are two ways around that.

First, as one of my classmates suggested, she dies early in the film and is resurrected later on. I’m not really a fan of this theory, because the movie has resurrection at its core. We’re already going to see resurrection of half of the universe. Why would anyone add another resurrection to the list? Also, she’s supposed to be the face of MCU in Phase 4. It wouldn’t be wise of them from business point of view to show the weak side of her in her 2nd appearance itself.

Second, she might have a seperate mission. One of teasers mention there being separate teams, which makes this quite likely. And, by this way, others also get their share of attention and screen-time, which they deserve. What these side missions are, that is really hard to say. We know absolutely nothing from the teasers or trailers about the plot. But, the fact that Marvel didn’t hesitate in showing the key elements of cheer like Tony & Steve meeting, Pepper hugging Tony, etc in the latest trailer tells us that Marvel is confident there’s much more in the final movie to make our throats hurt with screaming, cheering and hailing.

Mentioning of teams, another point I’d like to add is that Carol isn’t a team player. And, the Avengers also tend to trust her only because Fury contacted her. Since Fury is dead at the moment, it’s not hard to believe that they may refuse to trust her with so much responsibility. They clearly are resistant, with Rhodey asking her straight away for a reason, and Thor doing his own test of her. It can also result in a small arc of the movie. It has a long enough runtime to do a lot of stuff, and still be tight packed.

The movie is less than 2 weeks away, and I have my fingers crossed to get the ticket for an iMax theatre on the first day, before I get spoiled. The movie is going to be epic, and something we won’t experience for who knows how many years.

All we can do at the moment is to be patient, and trust Kevin Feige and the Russo brothers to know what they’re doing. There’s no way we can be disappointed. Let me know in the comments what your opinion is about Captain Marvel being in the Endgame. Looking forward!

I’ll be talking more about Endgame both before and after the release, so don’t forget to follow/subscribe, if you haven’t already.

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