Headscratchers / The Marvels (2023)

Goose becoming pregnant

• How did Goose get pregnant with Flerkittens if there was no male Flerken for her to mate with?
  • Maybe Flerkens are parthenogenic. We don't know anything about their biology, after all.
  • Goose has been travelling with Captain Marvel for a while. She could have encountered a male Flerken on any planet they visited, and been pregnant since before the movie started.
  • And for all we know there may be other Flerkens already on Earth to mate with... perhaps they just have very long pregnancies. Or very short ones considering Goose did spend a little time on Earth during the film.

Valkyrie helping the Skrulls

• The ending of Secret Invasion establishes that Earth is a very dangerous place for Skrulls to be because of President Ritson declaring a worldwide manhunt for any Skrulls who are still on the planet. With that in mind, wouldn't Valkyrie taking the Skrulls to New Asgard put her entire kingdom in danger, or in the very least risk international consequences?
  • There are only a couple of dozen Skrulls with Drogge that Valkyrie takes in, at the most. Her thinking is probably that such a tiny group of shapeshifters can be assimilated into New Asgard without the United States or its allies being any the wiser.
  • That's if Earth didn't already fix the problem at this point; if we consider that Secretary Ross is described as being President in Captain America: Brave New World, which means that Ritson's declaration likely wasn't politically supported by any Earth nation (definitely not England, considering Ritson's manhunt costs them their Prime Minister) that didn't want an intergalactic war, and he was cast out Fudge-style near immediately.
  • Considering that Ritson's Anti-Alien Act still had to be voted on by the United States Congress, it is entirely possible that he didn't get enough votes to pass it, as the fallout from Pamela Lawton's assassination as a result of Ritson's rhetoric might've tarnished the proposal.
  • Do we know that the movie happens after Secret Invasion, and not just before?
    • We know, because the Kree/Skrull peace meeting was mentioned in Secret Invasion.

Emperor Drogge's colony

• Couldn't the Skrulls in Secret Invasion have just gone back to Emperor Drogge's colony?
  • The Skrulls in Secret Invasion didn't come from Tarnax, so they couldn't go back there. They came to Earth from across the universe as opposed to heading to Tarnax. As well, that series establishes that there are over a million Skrulls on Earth at the time of Secret Invasion. The colony on Tarnax as depicted in this film occupies a single small valley and probably has a total population in the low thousands. This means that Tarnax doesn't have the infrastructure or resources to house, feed and employ any significant portion of the Skrull population currently on Earth. Which is probably the reason why Earth became the main gathering place of the Skrull diaspora: it is easier to emigrate to an already established inhabited place than to go to an empty planet and rebuild a civilization from scratch.
  • The series and the movie so pointedly ignore each other they may just as well be considered separate timelines. There are already plenty discussions from fans whether this Continuity Snarl will end up with a Retcon.

Valkyrie's arrival

• How is Valkyrie able to summon the Bifrost?
  • More than likely, they re-created Asgard's Bifrost.
  • Valkyrie did not summon the Bifrost the way Thor with Stormbreaker does, it was more like whenever Asgardians would signal to Heimdall to open the Bifrost and then he remotely activates it.
  • New Asgard probably recreated the Bifrost with the Stormbreaker.

Kamala's clothes

• During the initial swapping chaos, why did Kamala go from her hero outfit to civilian clothes at one point?
  • She wears her hero outfit during the fight. Then she's helping her family clean and has civilian clothes so possibly she changed once the fighting was over.

The Khan Family

• Why did Fury bring the Khan family up to S.A.B.E.R.? Why would he endanger them like that and presumably even if they asked so they could have a link to him to keep track of Kamala couldn't he just give them a link but not bring them up and then take it back after this is over.
  • S.A.B.E.R. is supposed to be top secret and Monica just blabbed about it to them. Plus their place was destroyed. It was probably to keep an eye on them so they don't say anything to other civilians, while also letting his people repair their home (they only move into Monica's place after she left, so if Monica had returned they would still live in Jersey City).
  • I pondered about it too. The one thing that came immediately to mind is that the Khans, greatly worried about Kamala's fate, insisted to be brought into S.A.B.E.R. to monitor the girl. Yeah, imagining them managing to browbeat THE Nick Fury into letting civilians into the top-secret space station was hilarious.

The other side

• Why did Monica have to close the hole on the other side? Couldn't she have done it on the side where she wouldn't be trapped? And if closing it would have been more effective on the other side, how would she know that? Are there any reasons that aren't she had to be stuck there for The Stinger to happen?
  • Dar-Benn blasted energy at the portal to force it open, so Monica has to blast energy in the opposite direction to push it back closed. It's like opening and closing a door with a water cannon: she didn't have any physical way to PULL on it, so she had to go to the other side to PUSH. It's not surprising that Monica would know this detail if you accept that she'd know how to close it at all. What's surprising is that the other Marvels thought she'd be able to come back out before it closed. It seemed obvious that when she said she would have to blast it with energy from "the other side", that would mean exactly what she said.
  • Maybe they were thinking in terms of setting off an explosion to blast the hole shut, then escaping before it closes all the way. It worked for Tony Stark, after all.

The final scene

• Two questions regarding the final scene where Kamala recruits Kate Bishop. First off, Kamala is knowingly making reference to Nick Fury's scene at the end of the original Iron Man. But how would she even know how that moment went, given it was a private conversation between two people that, both in-universe and out, happened many years ago, probably before Kamala was even born? And secondly, why is Kate so calm about finding a stranger in her apartment? In Hawkeye she instantly reacted when she heard Yelena's voice behind her. But here, with her bow within reach, she doesn't grab it even as a precaution.
  • For the first question, Kamala is extremely in-tune with the goings-on of superheroes. It's possible that at some point Tony said what Fury said to him in an interview, or he told Scott and Scott explained it in a later podcast or his book. It wouldn't be out of character for either of them, especially considering Fury is known by the public at least since the end of Winter Soldier.
  • There's no reason for Kamala to know Nick Fury's monologue word for word, it's a meta joke. As for why Kate seemed so calm, Kamala is a teenage girl in a brightly coloured outfit, she's not the most intimidating-looking person.
  • As posited by the Funny subpage, perhaps Kamala had the temerity to directly ask Nick Fury about it and Fury actually played along and told her.
    • Honestly, this is what I figured. After teaming up with Carol and Monica, Kamala is perhaps inspired to find a new generation of heroes and questioned Fury on his original recruitment of Tony Stark and perhaps he even told a comical story involving the speech he gave when he first met Tony.

Cover up Bangle

• While on Aladna, why didn't Kamala request an outfit that would cover up her Bangle?
  • She probably just didn't think of it...
  • Apparently, with the whole musical stuff that happened there, Kamala just forgot the Bangle.
  • Realistically it would get exposed in a fight. Kamala I think was supposed to hang back anyway. But it was more a matter or time then hiding the bangle.

Why even have a team?

• Why does Carol even need Kamala and Monica to help defeat Dar-Benn? This is the same character who nearly overpowered Thanos. Thanos, the guy who without the Infinity Gauntlet managed to subdue Iron Man, Thor and Captain America all on his own. So unless we're led to believe that Dar-Benn is even more powerful than Thanos, what does Carol need with the two of them? She's vastly more powerful than both of them combined, and the whole switching places thing would just be an inconvenience to her. She could just tell the two of them to not use their powers while she disposes of Dar-Benn.
  • Because Dar-Benn with her bangle is able to go toe-to-toe with Carol. She absorbs her blasts and effortlessly shrugs off punches from Carol and even getting hit in the face with her own hammer. Carol needs all the help she can get.
  • They keep switching when they use their powers, so it makes sense to have Kamala and Monica be part of the fighting.
  • As with many situations where the character is overwhelmingly strong in a power-based situation (Superman, Thor, Hulk), Dar-Benn's powerup combined with Carol's power-restriction has made this a situation that she can't simply solve with the mindless power of her muscles.
  • Dar-Benn would have inevitably come after Kamala once she found out that Kamala had the other Quantum Band. She was involved regardless of what Carol might prefer. And neither Kamala nor Monica are the type of people who'd stand by on the sidelines while innocent people were in danger anyway.
  • Not just strength either. Carol is literally faster than light. Punching Dar-Benn at those speeds would have vaporized her powerup or no powerup. The correct answer is "Because there would be no movie if Carol did that".
  • They are switching when using their powers. Carol can't afford to get bounced back to Earth or somewhere distant when she instinctively uses her powers. Better to be close and work together then create a major weakness.

Maria's house

• Who exactly is moving into Maria's house? Are the Khans moving in? Did they move from New Jersey all the way to Louisiana just because their house needed some repairs? Or is it Carol, as we see some of her things moving in, and the Khans are just helping her? It makes more sense that she would inherit Maria's house.
  • For the look of it, the Khans are the ones moving in, at least for a while. Muneeba even tells Aamir how nice the place is to start a family. Even more, Kamala's family can be there to watch over the house while Carol is in deep space.
    • I was confused as well, but I really think it's Carol moving in. We're shown a box labelled "Kitchen", and Muneeba complains about how it only has hot pockets and a weird but good quality plate - which is one of the commemorative plates from Carol's marriage to the prince that's briefly seen on his planet. So, clearly Carol's stuff. Then there's the plane, for which Carol doesn't have the keys because she's just keeping watch over it for Monica - she specifically says that she is keeping watch, not that the Khans are. But I agree that the scene is very confusing, and I'm not sure about its implications. Monica earlier on complained that when she returned after the Blip, no-one was there. So I guess we're to assume that Carol doesn't want that to happen again. But does that mean that she'll give up her guardianship of basically the entire universe just to hang out in rural Lousiana for who knows how many years? With a plane in her backyard which she, the trained fighter pilot, isn't allowed to use? That's going to get old very quickly. (Though I guess she could head over to Missouri and commiserate with Star-Lord who is in pretty much the same position.)

Carol not knowing Wanda

• Given that she shows familiarity with Vision when trying to come up with a superhero name for Monica, how does Carol not know who Wanda is, especially given that she's the "witch" that indirectly gave her niece the powerset she has, and who was the lover of Vision?
  • Carol knows who Wanda Maximoff is. What she probably doesn't know is that Wanda's powerset is actually Witchcraft, meaning that, as far as she's aware, Wanda got her powers from an Infinity Stone, just like her. At this point, the only confirmed people who know that Wanda is a witch are Monica, the Masters of the Mystic Arts, America Chavez and Agatha Harkness.

Monica complaining about Carol's absence

• Monica seemingly resents Carol for staying away from Earth, saying "you were needed here" but was she actually? Monica had grown up by the time her mother died so it's not like her adoptive aunt's absence left her alone (though living with a relative with cancer couldn't have been easy). Still, Carol's a cosmic superhero looking after the whole galaxy so isn't it pretty self-absorbed to expect her to come and spend time with her?
  • Monica is a human being which means she still has emotions even if their are logical explanations for Carol's behavior. She didn't mean she literally needed Carol but Carol was clearly a core part of the family. Her family was incomplete all those years. Monica obviously get's over it pretty quick as Carol reveals her history and feelings.

Conversation about blipping, absences, and cats

• Carol's flashback conversation with Maria really poses more questions than it answers. For one thing: In Avengers: Endgame, during the five years after the Snap, Carol had this awful bobcut and couldn't return to Earth because the rest of the universe needed her more. In this movie, during the five years after the Snap, Carol had her old (and new) hairstyle and apparently visited her friend on Earth at random, just checking in (since Maria told her about the cancer in this very conversation, rather than Carol having come because she'd already known about it).
  • Rocket snarks about Carol's haircut, which implies that she got it fairly recently compared to the Time Heist. She could've visited Maria at any point during the 5-year gap prior to getting the haircut. Carol also doesn't say that she can't return, just that she has a lot on her plate and it needs to be really important.
  • Wandavision mentions that Maria died three years after Thanos snapped half the universe. That means there's two whole years left until the scene were Rocket mocks Carol's new haircut. Carol probably just decided to change her haircut after Maria's death.
• Then, they talk about how the cancer is back, and how Maria has already beaten it once before. This must have been after the events of Captain Marvel, since nothing of the sort was mentioned there. But if Carol had been checking in regularly enough to follow Maria's life this closely, why does Monica make it sound as if she'd abandoned them for thirty years?
  • There's a thirty-something years timeskip between the two films. Carol likely didn't visit Earth until after the Snap, when she returned to the planet seeking Fury, then decided to make some visits to Maria when she find out that Maria has cancer and Monica has been snapped.
• Then, Carol says that she's not taking the cat and Maria points out that it's not a cat. Why does she think Carol would need to be told this? She was there when Goose revealed herself! Plus, if Goose were a regular cat, Maria could simply ask a friend or neighbour to take her, and they wouldn't have this conversation at all.
• Finally, Maria talks about Monica coming back and Carol answers: "Monica blipped." This was during the five years after the Snap - the term "Blip" could not have been around at this time. It only started being called that when the Snap had been undone.
  • It's possible that "snap" and "blip" were interchangeable before the Snap was undone, giving a reason to separate the terms. We see that all the time with language where two synonyms will divide over time into more specialized meanings.

Translator Microbes

• So Kamala can understand Skrull, Kree, and Aladnan, but Carol can't understand Urdu?
  • Maybe Urdu just isn't in the translators. We know that not every language is included, since the language that the High Evolutionary's experiments spoke in Guardians 3 wasn't.

Battle Outfits

• I realize that this is a staple of many MCU movies, but it still annoys me: Carol asks the prince if he can get them some battle-ready outfits. First of all, she doesn't need one - she still has her Kree Starforcer outfit back on the ship, plus earlier on in this very scene she changed her casual clothes into a princessy dress! Then, the others don't really need battle outfits either, since they use their powers. Finally, Monica's new outfits has some strips of fabric which she declares "too much" and rips off. Again, I realize that this is a nod to the comics. But in real life, isn't it incredibly rude to first demand that strangers make custom clothes for you at very short notice, and then rip apart their hard work and just casually throw bits of it to the side of the street?
  • What's the headscratcher? Carol wanted a new suit. Monica and Kamila can't manifest new suits. Yes they have powers but that doesn't mean their civi clothes are battle ready. They new suits could even have additional tech and durability options. As for Monica ripping out the extra stuff, well she's not going to make her battle suit uncomfortable just so she doesn't hurt people's feelings.

The Aquatic Planet

• If water covers nearly 100% of its surface, why would its dominant species even live on land? Why wouldn't they be better equipped for aquatic life (gills, fins, fishtails, ...), and why would their civilization have no discernible "water" motives?
  • There's no guarantee they evolved on the planet. They could be colonists who came from another world and then became independent.
  • It's possible that Aladna wasn't covered in water for its entire existence. Earth's water level has fluctuated based on whether we have polar ice caps. Maybe the Aladnans evolved during an ice age millions of years ago.

Starforce member Dar-Benn

• In the flashback to Carol Killing the Supreme Intelligence, Dar-Benn is seen wearing a Starforce uniform, indicating that she was a Starforce member. If she was a member, how come she was absent from the team in Captain Marvel?
  • We didn't see the entire Starforce, did we? Just Carol's team. She also looks fairly young in the flashback, so she might have been a new recruit and have been considered too inexperienced for Carol's mission. In fact, maybe she was near the Supreme Intelligence at this moment because she'd just gotten back from, or was on her way to, getting her assignment.

Just evacuate Hala

• The Kree are a spacefaring civilization. If their homeworld is dead and their star is dying, why not just leave?
  • Pride, possibly. It is their home planet. There's probably more shame in admitting that you have to flee than there is staying on a dying planet. It's also not like the planet was unlivable yet, just very miserable.

Dar-Benn's Bangle

• If Dar-Benn has a bangle just like Kamala, why does she have different powers? Also if for some reason Carol can't defeat Dar-Benn due to her energy absorption, isn't the obvious thing to do just to power up Kamala's band and have her fight Dar-Benn?
  • Kamala's powers don't come from the bangle. She's descended from an Energy Being from another dimension. The bangle just allowed her to access her powers for the first time. Also, the issue with Dar-Benn's energy absorption isn't just that she becomes stronger, but that she can No-Sell any incoming attack. Making Kamala stronger isn't going to solve that problem.
  • MCU Kamala is a mutant.

Kamala emerging from the Hoopty

• Near the end, the Hoopty lands on Earth and a tearful Kamala emerges alone, claiming that Carol's gone on to keep a promise. So - first of all, who piloted the ship? Kamala can't do that and Carol couldn't have set it on autopilot either since she had no idea where exactly Fury's shuttle would have landed. And second, given all the time that has passed, couldn't Carol's promise have waited a couple of minutes? If she'd just gone with Kamala and dropped her off she'd still have her ship (though at the very end she's somehow back on Earth anyway). And also Monica earlier on promised Kamala's family that they'd get her home safely, so wouldn't Carol have wanted to honour that promise, too, and see her home?

Matriarchial society

• Carol claims her political marriage to the prince was because his society is matriarchial and the marriage legitimises his rule. But that makes no sense at all. If it's a matriarchial society, the power to rule would be passed down from mother to daughter, so neither the prince nor Carol would have any legitimate claim! If they'd just out the bit about a matriarchial society it would make a lot more sense, since it might be that the prince is the legitimate ruler in his own right, but could only ascend to the throne if he was married (and for whatever reason didn't want to marry anyone from his planet).
  • Maybe the prince didn't have sisters.
  • Matriarchy doesn't need to be from mother to daughter. Just that rule/authority is held by women. So Carol probably has much more sway then the prince but his lineage is what legitimized anyones rule.