Production on The Marvels, the upcoming sequel to Captain Marvel that sees Brie Larson team up with a few other superheroes, is ongoing and Candyman (2021) director Nia DaCosta is stepping behind the camera for the new production. Speaking in a new interview the filmmaker opened up about how there’s a surprising similarity between the upcoming horror flick and her big-budget Marvel movie. “I can say it’s a very different beast,” DaCosta told Variety. “But I am obsessed with how we all deal with our pain and trauma, and there’s some of that in the story.” Let’s try and unpack that below.
As we know, Brie Larson will star in the movie alongside Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel, reprising her part from the upcoming Disney+ series, with WandaVision‘s Teyonah Parris returning as the freshly super-powered Monica Rambeau. A seed of what DaCosta is talking about was planted in WandaVision, when Parris’ character began to traverse through the Hex created by Wanda Maximoff and gain her powers, dialogue from the original Captain Marvel began to play (seemingly in her head). This moment harkened back not only to the young version of Monica that appeared in that film but another scene in WandaVision where it was implied that she had complicated feelings about Carol Danvers.
From the perspective of Monica, Carol flew away in the 1990s and didn’t come back to Earth until Thanos had snapped away half of all life in the universe. After The Hulk un-did that and brought everyone back it became clear that her mother Maria had died while she’d been blipped, and that Carol hadn’t done anything to help her.
“Not only did [Monica’s mother] pass, but Monica wasn’t there to help her mother transition. And that’s a very hard pill to swallow,” Parris previously told TVLine. “The guilt and the shame and whatever other grief she might be trying to sort through, while returning to work on a project she doesn’t even typically do — there are parallels between Monica’s grief and trauma and tragedy, as well as what Wanda is experiencing. Monica connects with Wanda on that level….We do have a lot of real estate and time to play with the relationships between Carol and Monica [in Captain Marvel 2].”
Samuel L. Jackson will be back as Nick Fury for the upcoming movie with his presence seemingly teased at the end of WandaVision. Other cast members include Zawe Ashton as the film’s villain, plus Park Seo-joon in an undisclosed role.
The Marvels is set to hit theaters on November 11, 2022.
