Captain Marvel 2 rumours: Starjammers, evil Skrulls, and a “Star Wars vibe”

Yesterday we got the news that Nia DaCosta, the up-and-coming filmmaker that is generating buzz with her Candyman reboot, will be directing the still-untitled Captain Marvel sequel. This was the most significant bit and only real piece of news we’ve gotten about the sequel since Marvel President Kevin Feige first announced it. As such we have no official knowledge about what Captain Marvel 2 (or whatever it gets called) is actually about.

Like I mentioned yesterday, it’s a fair guess that the sequel will be set in the time between when we saw Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers fly off into space to find a new homeworld for the shapeshifting Skrulls in 1995 and her showing up again in Avengers: Endgame in 2019. That’s a lot of potential time to cover though (including how she could have been around all that time) so your guess is as good as mine as to what the story will entail. But why guess? Why not just turn to Roger Wardell, the mysterious scooper whose early claims about Marvel’s Phase 3 films proved to be on the money? And yes, Wardell has indeed been hearing some tidbits about Captain Marvel 2.

Starjammers in Captain Marvel 2. Stakar, Aleta, Krugarr, Martinex, Charlie-27 and Mainframe are definitely much more than just a post credit scene. Korvac is indeed meant to be the main villain of the movie.

— Roger Wardell (@WardellRoger) May 6, 2020

Back in May, Wardell tweeted out a seriously intriguing detail, which is that the Starjammers would feature in Captain Marvel 2. The Starjammers are essentially a motley crew of swashbuckling space pirates from various planets led by an Earthling named Corsair.

Here’s where things get interesting: Corsair’s birth name is actually Christopher Summers, as in the absentee father of Scott Summers aka Cyclops and Alex Summers aka Havok. Yes, the X-Men. With the mutant franchise back under Marvel’s control with Disney’s acquisition of Fox, the comic book studio can now start laying the groundwork for its inevitable reboot of the X-Men into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Captain Marvel may just be playing an unexpected part in that plan.

As for Stakar, Aleta, Krugarr, Martinex, Charlie-27 and Mainframe mentioned by Wardell, those are actually the names of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Just not the one you may know. In Marvel Comics publication history, the current Guardians of the Galaxy led by Star-Lord and Gamora is actually the second team to use that name.

The original Guardians of the Galaxy debuted all the way back in 1969 and was a very different team from the 31st Century. In the comics, Yondu (who James Gunn used in the Guardians movie) was actually a member of this team. They’ve since been retconned into being from an alternate future timeline (the Earth-691 timeline) though some members have crossed over with the current Guardians in the mainstream “616” timeline. Marvel Studios has always played loose and fast with comic book continuity, so they may just ditch the 31st-century angle here though.

Wardell claims here that Korvac is the main villain of the film and this is once again a link to the Earth-691 Guardians. In the comics, Michael Korvac was a computer technician in the 30th century living in an Earth solar system conquered by the Badoon (specifically, the Brotherhood of the Badoon, the warlike male half of the reptilian alien race). Korvac would betray humanity and collaborate with the Badoon and was rewarded for his treachery with powerful cybernetic enhancements. Through some time-hopping stories that would take too long to explain here, Korvac also acquired cosmic abilities from The Grandmaster (who was played in Thor: Ragnarok by Jeff Goldblum) before eventually traversing time and space to end up in the Marvel-616 universe. Here he would power up again thanks to some inadvertent help from Galactus, becoming a god-like being who has been a foe to the Avengers ever since. He’s never really been linked with Captain Marvel though.

But according to another tweet from Wardell made as recently as June, the link between Korvac and Carol Danvers could be explained. One of the first film’s biggest surprises was that the shape-shifting Skrulls weren’t actually the world-conquering bad guys that the Kree made them out to be and how they’ve traditionally been represented in the comics.

By giving them a benevolent spin, it also blew apart many a fan’s theory that the MCU’s next big story arc will adapt Secret Invasion, the 2008 crossover that revealed that the Skrulls had secretly been kidnapping and replacing Earth heroes for years as part of their silent takeover of the planet. If the Skrulls are now good, they won’t do that, right? Well, yes. But what if not all the Skrulls were actually good?

Captain Marvel 2 will offer some serious Star Wars vibes. Evil Skrulls exist and are gathered as an extremist group called Badoon.

— Roger Wardell (@WardellRoger) June 21, 2020

An evil extremist faction of the Skulls calling themselves the Badoon instead of just introducing another conquering alien race may actually be a clever way around this problem (and now they could be the ones that kickstart Michael Korvac’s villainous story as well). And it means that a potential adaptation of Secret Invasion is most definitely still on the table.

So now we need to suddenly start acting all paranoid and watch for any out of character behaviour for the heroes. Or this will just allow Marvel Studios to go back and retcon any weird incongruities from past movies by just saying they were actually evil Skrulls back then, just like they did in the comics. Rather handy, that!

As for the “serious Star Wars vibes” that Wardell mentions, given just how these rumours are implying that Marvel is leaning HARD into their cosmic side, that’s actually not surprising at all. Some of the characters mentioned here are beloved but relatively obscure outside of hardcore comic circles. With James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 looking to hit that same angle as well, it’s pretty exciting for fans of that side of the Marvel universe like myself. Now just give me a Nova movie that leads into Annihilation and I can die happy.

Of course, this is all still rumour though, despite how reliable Wardell has been in the past. Especially since DaCosta may just want to put her own stamp on the Captain Marvel script currently written by Megan McDonnell. nearly every director of a Marvel movie has done that so far, adding their own creative sensibilities to the production, which means that a lot of what Wardell is claiming now could change. Either way, I’m looking forward to it.

Last Updated: August 7, 2020