Back when Captain Marvel was first introduced to audiences in 2019 through her solo film and Avengers: Endgame, it seemed like the character was intended to be a big cosmic player going forward. While Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers has shown up a handful of times in other Marvel properties, Carol hasn’t yet gotten to the “Big Deal” position she initially seemed ready for years ago.
The Marvels — which just dropped a new trailer — aims to address that by grouping Carol with the other two big members of her “Marvel Family” — her niece Monica Rambeau, aka Spectrum (aka the first woman Captain Marvel), as played by Teyonah Parris; and Iman Vellani’s Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel.
Kamala’s Disney+ show ended with Carol teleported into Kamala’s room in New Jersey, while Kamala herself is… somewhere she’d rather not be. Every time one of the women uses their powers, all three end up swapping places with one another.
The main thrust of the film will be the trio figuring out the “why” of their predicament, but they’ll also have to work out their own hangups and complicated feelings with one another, one swap at a time. Director Nia DaCosta has previously said she aims to use the Captain Marvel sequel to make Carol feel like a fully fleshed out person in a way that hasn’t been afforded to her in the past, and the movie also has some other character beats to address — namely, that Kamala’s a mutant, and that Monica’s got some thoughts about Carol being an infrequent part of her life.
MCU movies have been team-up films ever since Phase Two, but The Marvels looks to be one of the rowdier partnerships of the entire mega-franchise. With Kamala, Monica, and Carol hot swapping around the world (maybe the entire galaxy), there’s a lot of potential fun for DaCosta to have with the three superheroes chaotically bouncing from one event to the next. These things seem fated to always conclude in third act CG fisticuffs, so if nothing else, it seems like this film was made with that spectacle in mind from the jump.
Also starring Zawe Ashton, Park Seo-joon, Samuel L. Jackson, and Goose the Cat, The Marvels will come to theatres on November 10.