A Captain Marvel Sequel Is Already Looking Likely — Trolls Be Damned

Captain Marvel flew into theaters this week to cheers, applause (at least in my theater!) and a rad ‘90s soundtrack. The last film before Avengers: Endgame introduces us all to our new hero, Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), the inspiration for the Avengers (and Thanos’ worst nightmare). She’s funny, she’s fierce and she’s everything the universe needs to undo the damage suffered in Avengers: Infinity War. But aside from proving her obvious importance to the latest Avengers films, Captain Marvel also clearly sets up the perfect sequel story… if only Marvel would do us a solid and officially announce it. What are you waiting for, Marvel?! Give the people what they want! When is a Captain Marvel sequel going to happen?

While Marvel hasn’t officially greenlit Captain Marvel 2 yet, it’s not too much of a stretch to say that Captain Marvel will most likely get a sequel — because honestly, if it doesn’t, we will riot. Not only that, but Marvel Studios would be missing a huge opportunity for some sweet, sweet cash. Trolls sabotaging Captain Marvel's Rotten Tomatoes rating be damned, the film is already on its way to raking in more than $150 million opening weekend — a number Variety notes would place Captain Marvel in the top 20 highest domestic opening weekends of all time. Yeah, Disney and Marvel should probably order a second helping of that for business reasons alone.

Plus, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is finishing up its Phase 3 of films with Avengers: Endgame next month, and then Phase 4 begins. The mystery of what that will look like all depends on who makes it out of Endgame alive, but we already know that the Spider-Man sequel Spider-Man: Far From Home and Black Panther sequel Black Panther 2 are already on the roster for Phase 4 (along with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 that’s been put on hold amid the James Gunn scandal). So it only makes sense that Captain Marvel would also get a sequel.

As for when it would potentially come out? With Spider-Man: Far From Home slated for a July 2019 release and Black Panther 2 still waiting on a release date, we’re looking a few years before we see another Captain Marvel film, which means we’ll just have to keep rewatching Captain Marvel over and over again in the meantime to get our Carol Danvers fix.

But enough talk about potential dates — what would a Captain Marvel sequel even be about? If you were paying close enough attention to the ending of Captain Marvel, the film gives us an awesome blueprint for a second outing.

Obviously the sequel has the potential to go anywhere and do anything (Higher, further, faster, baby!), but small clues peppered in to the movie make the case for another period piece. While Captain Marvel takes place in 1995, over the course of just a few days (excluding flashbacks of Carol’s life in 1989 and earlier), Captain Marvel 2 could likely take place in the late ‘90s as she continues her mission to help find the Skrulls a new home planet.

Captain Marvel’s big twist in making the Skrulls a peaceful race of shapeshifters came a huge shock to fans expecting to see the Skrulls, lead by Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), as the villains of the film. But instead they were all refugees hunted by the Kree, because they wouldn’t submit to Kree rule. Captain Marvel helped reunite Talos with his family and other surviving Skrulls hiding on Mar-Vell’s (Annette Bening) ship. Once she defeated the Kree Starforce and scared Ronan (Lee Pace) and his Accusers away from Earth, the Skrulls were able to use Mar-Vell’s Tesseract-enhanced Light Speed Engine to fly away in search of the thousands of other Skrulls in hiding, scattered around the galaxy, as well as a new home planet with Captain Marvel by their side. And hopefully Talos would return for the sequel as well, as he was one of the most hilarious scene-stealers in the first movie.

So if the Skrulls aren’t the villains of the story, who is? The obvious answer would be Yon Rogg (Jude Law), the leader of the now-decimated Kree Starforce and the one who brainwashed Carol for six years. After she completely owned him with her photon blast in the desert, she sent him, injured, back to Hala with a message: she plans on ending the Kree-Skrull war and all the lies the Kree have been spreading about the “enemy.” Yon Rogg and the Kree will most likely not want someone blabbing that they’ve been lying about the Skrulls all this time, so another intergalactic battle seems imminent.

But another likely suspect for Captain Marvel 2’s villain is Ronan. After Captain Marvel destroyed his Accusers’ weapons and fleet, he ran scared. But before he retreated, he vowed that he’d come back for the weapon: “the woman.” Carol previously learned that she got her powers after she absorbed the Tesseract’s energy from destroying the Light Speed Engine, and we all know how much people in the MCU are obsessed with getting Infinity Stone powers. Ronan could return not only for revenge on Captain Marvel for taking out his army but also in his quest to get her powers for himself. And if Ronan the Accuser is going to return as a villain in Captain Marvel 2, that’s also another clue that the film would still take place in the past: it would have to be before Guardians of the Galaxy as Ronan dies at the end of that film.

And if we look to the comics for any more clues about what Captain Marvel 2 could be about, there are so many storylines the filmmakers can pull from, like 2008’s Ms. Marvel’s Vol. 3 when Carol Danvers works with Tony Stark to create a team called Operation: Lightning Storm to take out supervillains before they become global threats.

Or there is the Captain Marvel and the Carol Corps tie-in series to 2015’s Secret Wars storyline where Carol leads an elite squad of female fighter pilots that ends up with Carol joining an all-female team of Avengers.

Or if the sequel wants to take a deeper look at Carol’s history and origins, 2018’s The Life of Captain Marvel can serve as creative inspiration, as Carol discovers that her mother is Kree and the accident that gave her powers actually just awakened her preexisting Kree genes. That means what makes her Captain Marvel was inside her all along, just like her strong human spirit that allows her to triumph over her enemies in the first film. Talk about the perfect story!

There are so many different options for where a Captain Marvel sequel can go. All Marvel has to do is just greenlight Captain Marvel 2 to make all this speculation worth it. And if they know how to read dollar amounts, they absolutely will.