How 'Captain Marvel' connects to the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (SPOILERS)

Warning: This article contains spoilers from Captain Marvel

Captain Marvel might be set in the 1990s but there’a a lot linking it to the modern movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In fact, the superhero film provides a lot of backstory to the events and characters who have appeared in the MCU over the last ten years.

So in case, you missed some of these key points watching the movies, here we explain just how the Brie Larson-led movie connects to the Avengers and beyond.

The Tesseract

There was a collective intake of breath when the Tesseract was revealed to be the power source Mar-Vell was trying to protect in Captain Marvel. The Tesseract first appeared in a Thor post-credit scene but played a more significant part in Captain America: The First Avenger where it was found by Johann Schmidt (AKA the Red Skull) in 1942, years after the Asgardians hid it there on Earth for safe-keeping.

By the end of that film, it was deep in Arctic waters until Howard Stark recovered it and handed it over to S.H.I.E.L.D. for safe keeping. Though it seems that in-between then and Loki stealing it in Avengers: Assemble, the Tesseract ended up in the hands of Mar-Vell, who used her government access to steal it and experiment with it to create a lightspeed engine.

When Carol acquires the Tesseract, Goose swallows it whole and she decides it should remain on Earth under Fury and the Flerken’s protection. However, the end credit scene explains how it became more available for Loki to steal decades later.

It also appears that the Tesseract gave Carol Danvers her powers as she absorbed its energy that was used to power the lightspeed engine when she blew it up. We’ve known for a while that the Tesseract is an Infinity Stone and in Infinity War, Thanos crushes it to reveal that it is the Space Stone and adds it to his Gauntlet.

The fact that this powerful stone is the source of Captain Marvel’s powers could have major implications for how she might be able to defeat Thanos in Avengers: Endgame.

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Fury’s eye

Looks like the story about how Fury lost his eye isn’t as dramatic as he has had people believing over the years.

Actually, he loses the use of his right eye because Goose scratches him but because the cat isn’t a cat, rather a Flerken, it does far more damage.

The Avengers Initiative

The Avengers Initiative wasn’t originally going to be called that by Fury, it was actually going to be called The Protector Initiative.

However, he renames it Avenger after seeing Captain Carol “Avenger” Danvers is written on the side of her plane.

Ronan the Accuser and Korath the Pursuer

We’ve known for a while that Lee Pace and Djimon Hounsou would be returning to the MCU via Captain Marvel and they didn’t disappoint.

They first appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy, but in this film, the characters are far less fanatical. Pace’s Ronan is the leader of the Kree military faction, the Accuser Corps, while Hounsou’s Korath is a member of the same Star Force as Carol Danvers.

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Coulson and Fury’s friendship

The movie shows the beginning of Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) and Nick Fury’s (Samuel L. Jackson) camaraderie. Coulson is a new recruit at S.H.I.E.L.D. who accompanies Fury to check out the story of a woman crash landing in a Blockbuster video store.

Coulson later earns Fury’s respect when he comes to his aid during a tense scene at an underground government facility. By the film’s end, it’s clear the two’s friendship and trust in each other has been cemented.

Quinjet

The spaceship Carol and Nick commandeer at the underground research facility looks a lot like an early model of the Quinjets first seen in Avengers: Assemble. In fact, it’s apparently a Quadjet, the Quinjet’s predecessor.

This particular ship’s upgrades (courtesy of the Skrulls’ Science Guy) may have been taken on by S.H.I.E.L.D. in order to make later models become the most advanced airships on built on Earth.

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Fury’s pager

At the end of Infinity War, we saw Nick Fury get out his pager and send a message to Captain Marvel and in this movie we see where it came from. Fury had been using the two-way pager but after doing something a little naughty, Carol confiscated it. When she returned it she explained the upgrades she had made to allow him to contact her a few galaxies away “for emergencies only”.

In the mid-credit scene, the remaining Avengers are monitoring the pager and soon find out who Fury sent his final page to before getting dusted.

Captain Marvel is in cinemas now