The long-awaited sequel to Captain Marvel is finally here, as the titular Carol Danvers reluctantly joins forces with Kamala Khan's Ms. Marvel and Monica Rambeau to save the universe in The Marvels. A task easier said than done, really, when you can't use your powers without risking switching places with your teammates...
When it comes to the MCU, the franchise's latest outing is a pretty self-contained flick, with a relatively neat and conclusive ending to wrap your head around, but with so much action and cosmic chaos going on, we wouldn't blame you if you missed a couple of things. That's where we come in.
Below, we recap The Marvels ending, break down villain Dar-Benn's plan, reveal what happened to all those Flerkittens, and more. With that, it should go without saying that major spoilers for The Marvels follow...
The Marvels ending recap
After stealing the breathable atmosphere from Tarnax and the water from Aladna, Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) makes moves to pinch the final thing on her checklist that'll make Hala livable again: the Earth's sun. Using her sole quantum band (Ms. Marvel, at this point, is still in ownership of the other one), she creates a portal between the celestial body and her home planet, and starts syphoning it through the two jump points.
While all this is going on, Carol (Brie Larson), Monica (Teyonah Parris), and Kamala (Iman Vellani) help Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) evacuate his crew from the S.A.B.E.R. space station. Due to most of the escape pods being out of action, the gang encourage Goose's litter of hungry Flerkittens to "eat" the remaining staff on board, and store them safely in their pocket dimensions – heck, it's easier to transport a bunch of tiny "cats" than hundreds of human-sized workers, right?
In the chaos, Monica manages to have a look on one of S.A.B.E.R.'s computers and quickly works out where Dar-Benn is and what she's planning with the sun so, as Fury, the Khans, and the Flerkens plot a course for New York City, the Marvels take off for the baddie's ship to stop her.
As Fury and co touch down in Manhattan, and watch as the sun slowly starts to fade away, Carol, Kamala, and Monica confront Dar-Benn among the stars, and plead with her to give them the bangle. Unsurprisingly, she refuses, prompting a 3-on-1 fight where the eponymous trio switch continuously throughout. At one point, they even manage to get a hold of Dar-Benn's Universal Weapon – or cosmi-rod, as Ms. Marvel dubbed it – but it's not until Dar-Benn gets pinned to the floor by a bit of her broken ship that Kamala, Carol, and Monica manage to get the upper hand.
"It doesn't have to be this way," Kamala states, asking for her to give up the quantum band one last time, but the bleeding Dar-Benn vows not to. Struck by a brainwave, Monica then suggests that Carol fly into Hala's dying sun and bring it back to life again using her light energy. "I've never done anything like that before," Carol argues, to which Monica replies: "I've done a lot of stuff I've never done before today."
With that, Carol lifts the ship's panel off of Dar-Benn, but before they know it, the latter has grabbed Carol. In an attempt to help her idol, Kamala gets caught in the struggle, and Dar-Benn pushes the youngster to the floor and starts crushing her head with the Universal Weapon. In the kerfuffle, Dar-Benn takes Kamala's band from her and jumps off the ship, towards the jump point.
Despite Carol's protestations, Dar-Benn powers up the bracelets and taps them together, but the energy they produce is so strong, it causes her to instantly disintegrate. A battle-weary Carol brings the bands back to the ship, only for Monica to point out that Dar-Benn's explosion has blown a tear in spacetime and severed their powers-based connection. "That's a different reality bleeding into us," she explains, referencing the bizarre-looking solar system seen through the hole.
With no time to waste, Monica encourages the other women to use their energy to power her up so that she can fly through to the other reality and seal the rip from the other side and, while they hesitate for a moment, they oblige. For a while, it looks like Monica's plan is going to work perfectly, but when the hole starts rapidly shrinking and Monica doesn't come back to her own reality, Carol panics. Carol shouts at Monica to make her way back to the ship, but Monica insists she can't stop blasting the tear until it's fixed completely.
"I always knew I'd have to stay," she whispers, as Carol zooms out to try and pull her friend back. Sadly, though, she doesn't make in time. Heartbroken, she flies slowly back to Kamala on Dar-Benn's old ship and the two share an emotional hug.
In the follow-up scene, Captain Marvel tries to absolve herself of her long-standing guilt by using her energy to jumpstart Hala's sun. Later, Carol and Goose move into Monica and Maria's old home in Louisiana, which suggests she's planning on sticking around on Earth for a while, while Kamala – having had a taste of what it's like to be on a team – seeks out Hawkeye's archer pal Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) and proposes she join her crime-fighting squad. "Did you know Ant-Man had a daughter?" she asks with a grin, referencing Cassie Lang.
Why did the Marvels powers become entangled?
Towards the end of The Marvels, Carol works out what's really been going on with her, Kamala's and Monica's powers and informs them as to how their powers have become entangled. In a nutshell, the Quantum Bands were first created by the Kree as a means to create a transportation network of jump points. When Carol and Monica came into contact with one of the jump points simultaneously, and Dar-Benn disrupted the long-established network, they connected to one another and Kamala, who was wearing the other Quantum Band at the time.
Turns out, Dar-Benn's repeated rupturing of jump points caused increasing damage and instability to the network, endangering the universe.
What was Dar-Benn's plan?
While her people on Hala have existed in the darkness for the last 30 years, there's a reason Kree warrior Dar-Benn wants Earth's sun specifically in The Marvels, and that's to get revenge on the Annihilator, a name she bestowed upon Captain Marvel after the Avenger destroyed the Supreme Intelligence. While Carol thought she was doing good by blowing up the AI three decades ago, she inadvertently kickstarted a civil war, as "heretics rose up to fill the void" left behind by the Kree's former ruler. The conflict polluted Hala so badly that the planet, essentially, died, and Dar-Benn has been trying to restore it ever since.
Her mission? To rob Tarnax, a Skrull refugee colony, of its air; steal the oceans from the singing planet of Aladna, and use Earth's sun to finally bring Hala back to its former glory. To do so, she seeks out the Quantum Bands – one of which she finds on NB418; the other, she takes from Ms. Marvel – to create jump points throughout the galaxy, and filter each element through the mystical portals.
Is Dar-Benn dead?
While technically anything is possible when it comes to superheroes and the MCU, we're assuming that Dar-Benn is well and truly gone given her final scene in The Marvels. There's no real coming back from a disintegration after all...
With the very end of the movie leaning into the idea of a multiverse, there's always a chance that another version of the Kree Suprema is out there somewhere, but for now, we think it's pretty fair to say that Dar-Benn is a goner.
What happened to the Khans?
Right at the very end of The Marvels, we see the Khan family, all safe and sound, helping Carol move into Maria's old home in Louisiana. As her mum, dad, and brother ferry boxes into the house, Kamala marvels at the old plane out front and asks Carol whether she can still fly it.
"Wanna go check it out?" Carol asks, to which Kamala gives an enthusiastic "yes". As the twosome chat about Monica and how much they miss her while sitting in the pilots' seats, Kamala's mother Muneeba (Zenobia Shroff) starts teasing her son about starting a family. "This would be a nice place to raise some kids," she says with a smile and the most bombastic of side-eyes. Aamir (Saagar Shaikh) reacts by trying to mute his mother with a remote control of Carol's.
As for Fury, our best guess is that he's settled on Earth for a while, considering the S.A.B.E.R. space station is no more.
Does The Marvels set up the Young Avengers?
The very last scene of The Marvels, not counting the mid-credits sting anyway, sees Kamala Khan show up announced to Kate Bishop's home. Emerging from a shadowy corner of the latter's place, much like Nick Fury used to do when approaching the Avengers, she whispers: "Did you think you were the only kid superhero in the world?"
"I'm 23," Kate scoffs, as Kamala holds up one of S.A.B.E.R.'s intel logs. "Oh, I know, I've been reading up on you. You've just become part of a much larger universe which, at the moment, is just me... mostly... I do have feelers out though. I'm putting together a team and I want you on it. Please?"
If you've not kept up to date with Marvel's TV shows, you might be a little confused as to who Kate Bishop is. In short, she, like Kamala was of Captain Marvel, was a superfan of Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), and trained in archery to try and match his skills. In the Hawkeye series, she helps the former Avenger evade enemies he made during his time as Ronin, the violent vigilante, after the Blip.
Where is Monica now, and who is she talking to? Is Maria Rambeau Captain Marvel?
When Monica wakes up in the parallel universe hospital, she finds none other than her late mother – and Carol's best friend – Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch) sitting beside her. The twist that blights their emotional reunion, of course, is that Maria has no idea who Monica is. Plus, she's sporting a scarlet and white suit that looks a lot like Binary's. In Marvel Comics, Binary is an alter-ego of Carol Danvers, so it seems likely that Maria is Captain Marvel is in her universe.
It wouldn't be the first time she's taken on the mantle in the MCU, either – in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Maria was Earth-838's Captain Marvel and a member of the Illuminati. That version was killed by Scarlet Witch (Eizabeth Olsen), though.
Are the X-Men coming to the MCU?
The X-Men's introduction to the MCU has only been a matter of time since Disney bought Fox, the studio that made the X-Men movies and, by extension, the rights to the characters. Beast isn't quite the first X-Men character to cameo in the MCU, though – Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) appeared in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness as a member of the Illuminati on Earth-838, but he didn't last long when faced with the wrath of Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen).
Beyond cameos, we know that Hugh Jackman's Wolverine will have a bigger part to play in the upcoming Deadpool 3, which is set to hit cinemas next summer and will see the Merc with the Mouth officially join the MCU.
Could Kelsey Grammer's Beast (and the rest of the of the X-Men: Days of Future Past cast) be joining him? Deadpool 3 certainly seems like the logical entry point for the rest of Professor X's team to be introduced to the MCU, but we'll have to wait and see for now. For more, read our breakdown of The Marvels post-credits scenes explained.
The Marvels is in UK and US cinemas now. For more, check out our guides, some of which are spoiler-heavy, on:
- The comics that influenced The Marvels, according to Nia DaCosta
- When does The Marvels take place on the Marvel timeline?
- The MCU movies and shows to watch before The Marvels
- The Marvels director weighing in on whether or not you need to have watched the TV shows beforehand
- Nia DaCosta explaining The Marvels' "lighter, softer" Fury
- All of The Marvels Easter eggs and MCU references
- All of The Marvels cameos - listed and explained
- How does The Marvels ending set up Deadpool 3?
- The comic book history of Monica Rambeau
- Ms. Marvel: The powers and comic book origins of Kamala Khan
