Captain Marvel
The next venture in the MCU takes us back 23/24 years ago to 1995 to introduce us to the first female lead character in the MCU- Captain Marvel. 50 years after Captain America and 13 years before Iron Man’s debut, this entry was made to portray a backstory to Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel who will provide some assistance in the following Avengers Endgame.
There is a significant amount of connectivity in this film to the rest of the MCU, the primary and foremost being the presence and role of the Kree race especially in relation to Carol’s history. From the Kree planet Hala came Mar-vell, who masqueraded as a S.H.I.E.L.D agent named Wendy Lawson working at a USAF base on an experimental jet engine utilizing Tesseract energy as its power source. The USAF base is a location of Project Pegasus- the same project seen in The Avengers where the Tesseract was being studied thus maintaining the consistency that S.H.I.E.L.D did indeed gain possession of it and kept it for decades after being found by Howard Stark. In 1989, Mar-vell was killed by another Kree- Commander Yon-Rogg, for committing treason by providing aid to the Kree’s long-time enemy the Skrulls by attempting to tap into the Tesseract’s energies to create an engine that would allow a ship to travel at light speed thus allowing the Skrulls’ escape from the persecution and massacre of the Kree.
Carol, a fellow air force pilot at the base witnessed this execution and as a result, was mind-wiped and abducted by the Kree but prior to that she destroyed the engine to prevent the Kree from obtaining it for themselves and as a result absorbed some of the fluctuated energy and gained her powers and abilities. Sequentially, Carol is the fifth being to gain powers from an Infinity Stone in the MCU after Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Ultron, and Vision and the first chronologically. Though the method of how Carol gained her powers in the MCU is relatively the same as how it happened in the comics (explosion of a Kree-related device), in the comics the explosion caused a fusion of Mar-vell and Carol’s cells (later retconned to jumpstarting Carol’s cells due to her half-Kree half-human lineage) essentially transforming Carol into a female version of Mar-vell going by the alias Ms. Marvel, that being said because Mar-vell in the comics is a man who goes by the identity of Walter Lawson and Yon-Rogg is a Colonel, not a Commander, who harbours a grudge and hatred for Mar-vell because of his lust for Mar-vell’s wife.
At some point after Mar-vell’s death in the film, the Tesseract was kept safe on her ship were Nick Fury and Carol found it 6 years later. In the film, there is a cat named Goose which belongs to Mar-vell. In the comics, the cat is named Chewie. Both incarnations are of a race called Flerken: they resemble Earth cats that possess numerous tentacles and protruding tendrils from their mouths that have teeth, possess an abyss inside them in which exist pocket universes and can be used for dimensional travel, and in the MCU reality possess toxicity which is why Nick Fury’s eye became permanently damaged after being scratched by Goose. Goose swallows the Tesseract to protect it from the Kree and regurgitates it back out once the threat is over.
The film gives us a twist by revealing the Skrulls are oppressed by the Kree making them the victims and the Kree antagonistic although in the comics the Kree are by no means a benevolent race either: they believe themselves to be destined galactic conquerors and they are morally ambiguous but the Skrulls are even more so being even desperate enough to execute an invasion and replace many of the Avengers in an attempt to take Earth as their planet after Galactus’ then Annihilus’ ravaging and destruction on their own. In terms of which race has historically been more antagonistic towards the Avengers in the comics, that award would have to go to the Skrulls who have infiltrated Earth not once but twice. Significant Skrull enemies include Kl’rt the Super-Skrull, a recurring enemy of the Fantastic Four, and Veranke the Skrull queen who led the Secret Invasion. The only Kree character who has truly had a conflict with the Avengers has been Ronan the Accuser who makes an appearance in the movie.
Other significant comic characters include Monica Rambeau who appears as a daughter to Maria Rambeau, Carol’s friend and fellow air force pilot. Monica Rambeau becomes the next Captain Marvel after Mar-vell’s death in the comics. Another character is the Supreme Intelligence who in the comics is the combination of the greatest minds of the Kree people past and present. Agent Coulson also makes a reappearance though barely does anything. At the end of the film, Fury adopts a nickname that Carol used while being in the Air Force- The Avenger, alluding that after Fury’s encounter with Captain Marvel he is inspired in investing in a team of superpowered individuals dubbing it the Avenger Initiative.