What We Can Expect In Captain Marvel 2
With the limited amount of screen time she’s had Captain Marvel’s a made a few waves. She’s already established herself as one of the strongest Avengers around. Her only other equal at this point -- if not, then her admitted superior is Doctor Strange. Even though she spends most of her time off-world, Captain Marvel has proven herself to be one of the most reliable Avengers around thanks to her abilities. She managed to stop the Kree from suppressing the Skrulls. She’s saved numerous worlds from untold dangers, and she even managed to put some fear in Thanos before she was blown away by the power stone.
All in all, it looks like she’s shaping up to be one of the new primary Avengers of MCU now that the original six have more or less disbanded. That means she’s got a lot of potential for more appearances in the future. She’s done a lot so far, but what else might be in store for her later on down the line.
Monica Rambeau: AKA Photon
In the MCU, the second movie of a solo trilogy tends to be a duet. If the superhero of the movie has a sidekick-type character in their roster, their normally introduced at this stage. In Iron Man 2 for instance James Rhodes became War Machine. In Captain America: The Winter Soldier Bucky was running around as the Winter Soldier, and Sam becoming Cap’s backup as Falcon. In Ant-man and the Wasp, Ant-Man teamed up with -- well the Wasp. You get the picture. The second movie is typically the team up movie, or the movie where the heroes best friend character joins the fray in some shape or form. Captain Marvel herself has such a character in her roster, and we think her sequel film is going to stick with the tradition of introducing this character as her wingman, or wingwoman in this case -- whatever floats your boat.
Monica Rambeau is the character were referring to in this instance. She’s probably the most recurring teammate that Captain Marvel has in the comics, and her inclusion in the first film almost guarantees her some importance in the upcoming movies. She was introduced as a child in Captain Marvel, but since then a considerable amount of time has passed. With the five-year time skip taken into account from Avengers: Endgame it’s been around at least 30 years since Captain Marvel has seen Monica. That means Monica has reached the age she would be when she’s flying around as Photon, Monica’s superhero persona. At least “Photon” is the superhero persona Monica is most known for, but she’s had many others. She’s been called Spectrum, Pulsar, Daystar, and has even held the Captain Marvel moniker herself.
As Photon, Monica is like most other best friend/sidekick characters since her powers are akin to that of the main hero that she associates with. This means that she can do pretty much everything that Captain Marvel can do. Photon can fly, has super strength, durability, speed, and even Captain Marvel’s signature ability to shoot photon blasts from her body.
It’s hard to say how Photon will come into being in Captain Marvel 2. In the comics, She received her powers when she was infused with extra dimensional energy from an energy disruptor weapon (you know typical comics stuff). Hard to say how she’ll receive them in Captain Marvel 2, however, since the MCU tends to do things differently. If we had to guess, it’ll probably happen in the same fashion as the comics but with little tweaks here and there, the same way they did with Captain Marvel basically. Maybe the extra dimensional energy she absorbs will come from the multiverse Spider-Man: Far From Home with explore. Regardless, her appearance will require that Captain Marvel come back to Earth in the second movie.
Secret Invasion Setup
Captain Marvel helped the Skrulls colonize other worlds when she departed from Earth back in her original movie. She did this because the Skrull are supposed to be good guys, victims who were dragged into a war they didn’t want by the Kree. This is all well and good, but we don’t think that whole “good guy” thing is built to last.
The Skrulls are a race of aliens that profit off of fooling other people. They make it their business to know everything that they can about another race or individual and then use that information to help them perfect their shape \shifting abilities. Basically, they know how to manipulate others; they’re masters at it. Because of this, we don’t think their telling the whole truth that they’re as blameless for their war as they claim to be. We don’t think it’s a far fetched idea that their just using Captain Marvel as a weapon against their enemies, and hiding behind her like a shield whenever they retalita. The only difference this time around is that the Skrulls don’t need to do any shapeshifting in order to trick Captain Marvel, not any physically shapeshifting anyway.
So, since Captain Marvel is going to be expected to head back to Earth in order to pick up Monica, it’s possible that she’ll bring some of the Skrulls back with her for whatever reason. Maybe they’ve feed her another lie about an enemy that they’ve been assaulted by. They tell her what she needs to hear so that they can get back to Earth and take the planet for their own, or because they want some of their elites to shapeshift and adopt all of the superpowers from the new heroes that have appeared there since Captain Marvel originally left. In the comics, some Skrulls can shapeshift well enough to pull this off. We haven’t seen this ability in the MCU yet, but there’s no reason why this movie can’t be used to introduce them.
Now that the Skrull have made it back onto Earth, they can go around setting themselves up in positions of power, so that a potential Secret Invasion storyline takes place. This story arc doesn't even have to be an Avengers Movie storyline. If Marvel wanted to, they could use it for Captain Marvel 3, allowing the movie to imitate Captain America: Civil War a bit. The only difference this time is that the heroes will be working together to fight themselves, which, when you really think about it, doesn't sound that different from Captain America: Civil War after all.
Possible Thor Meetup
We theorized before that we think it’s quite possible that Captain Marvel will meet up with Thor in her second movie. Thor is currently with the Guardians of the Galaxy which means there’s a high chance he’ll be adventuring with them in their third movie. Even if he doesn’t do anything with them, though, their still taking him up into space with them so he can figure out exactly what it is he wants to do next with his life. Since he’s in space already, why not have him join up Captain Marvel?
This arrangement helps both characters. Thor is currently at rock bottom. His overweight body has drastically cut his power and his mental state is nowhere near where it used to be. Captain Marvel, on the other hand, is arrogant to a fault, something that was only made worse when she realized her full powers. Thor’s been in her position, and Captain marvel can help Thor out of his. Both of these Avenegres have held real power before, but only Thor has experienced what it’s like to lose despite that. Thor can help Captain Marvel learn a little humility before it’s too late while Captain Marvel can help Thor regain his figure and old power. She might even be able to help go beyond his old limits and start him on the path to obtaining the Odin Force (or Thor force in his case, whichever one the MCU wants to adapt).
Associating with Thor would also just be a good way to see Captain Marvel interact with other MCU characters outside of her inner circle. Captain Marvel has had little to no interaction with any of the other Avengers. So far, the only character she’s had any real back and forth with has been Nick Fury, and Nick Fury has his hands in everything so he doesn’t really count. With Thor, however, we’ll actually get to see Captain Marvel interact with a fellow Avenger, and not just an Avenger but with one of the original six. She’s the only new Avenger member who hasn’t established a personal connection with another member of her team yet. Spider-Man has bonded with Iron Man and Doctor Strange. Black Panther has bonded with Captain America. Doctor Strange has bonded with Iron Man and Spider-Man. Captain Marvel had some interaction with Balck Widow, but it was limited to her giving status reports rather than performing any actual engagement.
Return of the Kree?
Captain Marvel didn’t actually destroy the Kree empire on screen. In fact, as far as we know, she hasn’t destroyed the Kree Empire at all. In the original Captain Marvel movie, Carol defeated Yon-Rogg and the Kree forces sent to Earth to destroy it, but she didn’t take on the entire Kree Empire. In fact, Yon-Rogg didn’t even die in the movie (surprising we know considering Marvel’s track record). Captain Marvel sent hiYon-Rogg back off to Hala to tell them all that she was coming for them.
If we remember Guardians of the Galaxy correctly, Ronan the Accuser didn’t say anything about his people being destroyed. It’s actually mentioned in the movie that he’s a wanted criminal of the Kree Empire. That means it’s probably safe to assume that Carol didn’t raze Hala to the ground after the events of Captain Marvel. There’s no reason to think that she later did it off screen either in the following years. It’s possible that she visited the Kree and instead of dismantling them, she pared away the ones who were tyrannical. In response, the Empire decided to change their ways, and one of the ways they did this was by foraging and alliance with Xandar, which Ronan turned out not to like very much.
Basically, this means there’s a very high chance that we’ll be seeing the Kree return in some form or another when the second movie drops. As far as we know, Yon-rogg is still alive, and therefore has some unfinished business with Carol. His return, will be a good way for Marvel to either explain what happened to the Kree after Captain Marvel’s promise to them, or show what’s going to happen to the Kree now that they’ve reminded Carol they exist.
Wrap Up
Captain Marvel left enough loose ends behind by on it’s own to set up some major plot elements for the second movie. We don’t know if the Skrulls are going to remain good guys, despite being terrible individuals in the comics (aside from a select few, of course), and we don;t know what the current situation with the Kree is. We know they’re around, we know they abandoned Ronan the Accuser, but we don’t really know what their current state of affairs is. The future movie has a lot of wiggle room with what it can do in terms of plot, and a lot of things it should do in order to either close out certain plot lines or further develop ones already established.
On the other hand, there are a few potential characters that could make appearances in the second movie. Monica Rambeau seems like a guarantee to show up. It makes no sense to introduce her in the first movie and then not capitalize on the massive time jump since then. Not to mention Captain Marvel hasn’t bothered to visit her at all in about 3 decades so the interactions between them should be great. Thor is in the same boat. As a fellow Avenger and once strongest Avenger, he can help Captain Marvel get over some of her more subtle weaknesses.
