captain marvel Archives

I’ll Spend This Entire Weekend Thinking About That One Scene From “The Marvels”

The following review of The Marvels has spoilers, particularly for Captain Marvel’s storyline with Valkyrie. Proceed with necessary caution if you’re intending to see the film.

In Marvel Studios latest film, The Marvels, Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers, played by Brie Larson) is once again saving the world. This time she has rescued a group of Skrulls, aliens who have been locked in a decades long civil war with the Kree. She’s put as many Skrulls as she could on her spaceship, flying away as their refuge is blown into stardust. It’s a temporary solution.

But Carol knows this friend. She can call her for help. A sharp streak of purple that cracks through the stars later, and Valkyrie appears.

King Valkyrie is as mesmerizing as ever in a three-piece black and white suit, her braided hair folded into a bun on top of her head with tendrils framing her face, at least three gay rings adorning her fingers. Extremely valid critiques of Marvel’s hide and seek approach to queer sexuality aside, Tessa Thompson has always carefully and purposefully imbued Valkyrie with her own queerness. She fought for it, she called out the studio when Valkyrie’s same sex love interest once landed on a cutting room floor. And now here she stands, a queer Black woman playing a queer Black warrior of a superhero.

Valkyrie is worried. Instantly, her face goes soft. She holds Carol close. She asks, voice heavy, “Are you alright?” It’s not like Carol to call like this.

We learn that Valkyrie calls Captain Marvel “Marv,” for short. A pet name, if you will. Every second is a minute, minutes stretch for time unknown. They seemingly cannot stop touching each other, holding hands, caressing forearms, talking in hushed warm tones that after a half decade of seeing them both on screen, we’ve never heard from either one before. They hug for a second or two longer than would be deemed merely “friendly.” I hold my breath.

Carol needs Valkyrie to take the remaining Skrulls someplace safe. She smiles, agreeing to offer them a port in the storm. But her eyes? Her eyes never stop searching Carol’s eyes. Are you alright? never stops prickling from behind her pupils. Carol’s eyes crinkle with recognition in return. Stories pass between them that aren’t for us, the audience, to know.

These are women who care and have cared for each other, who have found a home in each other, despite their respective loneliness. Having Brie Larson and Tessa Thompson, growing masters of their craft, play together on screen means that so much more carries than what’s on the page of a thin blockbuster script designed to delight with the thrill of a carnival ride instead of complicated character beats. (To be clear, I love action blockbusters. I don’t believe every script needs to be quiet arthouse fare. But it’s hard not to notice that The Marvels had three scriptwriting credits, including director Nia DaCosta, and wonder what kind of studio influence impacted the final production of the film.)

Valkyrie looks past Carol’s shoulder to the crowded ship — Carol’s ~~step-daughter~~ niece, Monica (Teyonah Parris), her protégée Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), the Skrulls she has tried to keep safe for over 30 years. The Asgardian reminds her that asking for help is strength, not a weakness. It’s good to have team. “You can stand tall, without standing alone.”

Then Valkyrie leans in to Carol, slowly, so gently, the camera framing both of their profiles. She says the rest of her words tucked into a soft lingering kiss, placed at Carol’s cheekbone. There’s the kind of gay you can see, and the kind of gay you can touch, and then there’s the kind of gay that you just know.

Thus far the MCU’s Captain Marvel is not technically gay, but also?

In the Marvels, Captain Marvel wears a white tank top and cooks on her space ship.

I waffled about writing this review, to be honest. I struggled with it for days longer than I should have. After being burned so many times by Marvel and Disney over the last 15 years, watching as the studios continue to ask its gay audience to settle for the bare minimum, I’m reticent to give them more space or credit than they deserve. In 2019, ranking Carol Danvers’ outfits by lesbianism, gay gasping at her instantly recognizable queer haircut in Endgame, felt optimistic — a promise of a what’s to come. Now it’s crystalized, for me at least, that promises of “next time there will be more” will always have the goal post moved. Are we at a place where Carol’s queer-coded white tank top and a kiss on a cheek is really still worth being written about? In doing so, am I being complicit in saying that queer audiences are not deserving of our fullness?

I weighed this with our Senior Editor who also helms Autostraddle’s film and television coverage, Drew Burnett Gregory. Drew quipped: “The way every big studio wants no gay and every actor wants gay… heroes.”

It’s stayed with me. Like Tessa Thompson, Brie Larson has advocated for Carol Danvers’ queerness. In 2019, during the lead up to what was once seen as Marvel’s grand finale Avengers: Endgame (I think we all understand it now to be more of a mid-point), Larson told Variety, “I don’t understand how you could think that a certain type of person isn’t allowed to be a superhero. So to me it’s like, we gotta move faster. But I’m always wanting to move faster with this stuff.” Fitting that she was echoing Carol Danvers’ life motto. “Higher, Further, Faster.”

Speaking of “higher, further, faster,” The Marvels moves rapidly. Arguably, too rapidly. Clocking in at one hour and 45 minutes, it has the shortest run time of any other film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and it shows. With a legacy of Marvel films that have suffered from bloat, I never thought I’d bemoan that one needed more time with its characters. The Marvels excels at making efficient use of its tight minutes, but the first act reads choppily. It’s hard to feel settled, even if you’ve seen the precursor film and both television shows for each central character (for those curious, I’d say that seeing Captain Marvel and the television series Ms. Marvel are central to The Marvels’ plot, seeing WandaVision is recommended because it’s excellent, but not necessary to follow along in this instance). However, once The Marvels slows down to find itself — once Valkyrie makes her cameo — there is a lot of good here.

Nia DaCosta’s indie working class political thriller Little Woods remains one of my favorite films, a showcase for both DaCosta’s restraint and ability to manipulate time as well as Tessa Thompson’s acting chops. The two have remained close friends and Thompson was DaCosta’s first call after being hired for The Marvels (she is the first Black woman director, and the youngest, to ever helm a Marvel project). It’s clear that DaCosta took Captain Marvel seriously on her own terms. By which I do not mean “make a serious movie” — quite the opposite. To take the Captain Marvel franchise seriously means embracing its 90s aesthetic girl power humor, Carol’s deadpan tone, its lightness. DaCosta made room for The Marvels to be bright and playful, filled with characters that are impossible not to love (Vellani’s Kamala Khan and her entire family are standouts in this regard; she has the future of the MCU in the palm of her hand and Marvel would be smart to give a standalone movie right away).

It also meant that DaCosta had to take Carol Danvers’ queerness seriously, even when inhibited by studios and even when it’s not on the page. In addition to the scene with Valkyrie, Carol’s first love (depending on which fan you ask) Maria Rambeau makes an appearance that I will not spoil, only to say that the production chose a hairstyle that can only be described as “someone handed the hairdresser a photo of a Tracy Chapman album cover and said, ‘do this, but add frosted grey tips.’” Carol and Monica, Maria’s daughter, have opportunities to work through their family trauma that feel rooted for a space opera. And as Kamala Khan, Iman Vellani is every bit a teen fangirl who… we’ll just say that if you spent high school reading fanfiction between classes and also now read this website, you’ll see yourself in her quite a bit.

This isn’t enough. It can’t be. But higher, further, faster, baby.

Let’s All Enjoy This One Millisecond of Tessa Thompson in “The Marvels” New Trailer

In a final push to get people to secure their tickets for the Captain Marvel sequel, simply titled The Marvels, which comes out this weekend, Marvel Studios pulled out the big guns. And by “the big guns” I mean the canons that are on each of Tessa Thompson’s arms. Because Valkyrie, the love of my nerdy geeky ass life, is back in The Marvels final trailer. And she is gazing upon Carol Danvers’ face with the warmth of a thousand suns.

Valkyrie licking a sword in Thor: Love & Thunder

This is not Valkyrie in The Marvels trailer. I just wanted to make sure you got the joke about her arms. Have you seen them? My god.

It’s a nice confirmation of a long-standing rumor that Valkyrie would be making a guest appearance in the film for years now (some eagle eyed fans caught a glimpse of Tessa Thompson’s headshot in the background of a Captain Marvel behind the scenes all the way back in 2021).

Of course, fans have long wanted Valkyrie and Captain Marvel to be the cosmic superhero power couple of the MCU. Valkyrie’s been gay coded since she was first introduced making a strap-on joke about a laser gun. Carol’s first feature-length debut was so gay that Autostraddle dedicated an entire post just to ranking her outfits by lesbianism. Captains of the Carol/Valkyrie ship include none other than Brie Larson and Tessa Thompson themselves, who used the entirety of their 2019 press run leading into The Avengers: Endgame to spread the good word of fandom’s unrelentless gay agenda. Plus, there were some heavily unsubstantiated rumors in 2020 that a girlfriend for Carol might be on the horizon.

Alas, I have to be real with you. Valkyrie is only in The Marvels trailer for a millisecond (two milliseconds, if you include the voice over before we see her face). Now, is that enough to stir back up the Marvel fan within me and force her to finally get life together and buy a ticket? Of course it is. Am I probably being queer baited by the House of Mouse once again? You know it. But I only have one precious silly life, and if I want to spend two hours of that life looking upon Tessa Thompson being hot in a three-piece suit and Brie Larson as a lesbian superhero (I said what I said) breaking spaceships apart with her bare hands, then it is my god given right to do so and you cannot stop me.

If you’re coming to The Marvel for the plot — and I mean the actual plot, not the thing gays do when we say “I’m here for the plot” and the plot is Tessa Thompson’s face — here’s what you need to know: Since the end of Avengers: Endgame Carol Danvers has been off-world fighting baddies, meanwhile her ~~step-daughter~~ niece Monica Rambeau grew up to be a superhero in her own right (now played by Teyonah Parris as an adult). She has a lot of hurt feelings about Carol, which we assume are about Carol abandoning her as a child, but that’s not confirmed yet. The two of them will also be meeting Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani, superhero name Ms. Marvel) who is a Muslim teen nerd from New Jersey and a Carol Danvers’ superfan. The three heroes will be joining forces to battle Dar-Ben (Zawe Ashton) who is mad at Carol for… reasons we don’t know yet. But things will go bang bang clang boom I am sure, and I believe wholeheartedly that it will be great.

The Marvels has seen some brutal pre-release ticket sales slumps, in large part because of the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike. The strike means that no stars of the film could promo it (though director Nia DaCosta has been on a quite press run, she’s the youngest director and the first Black woman to helm a Marvel release. I love her work!). Studios should give actors a fair deal that includes common sense understandings of the impact AI will have on creative industries and actors’ likeness. Without the work of actors, projects like The Marvels wouldn’t exist. Just had to get that off my chest! Back to Valkyrie and Carol Danvers, I wish them a lifetime of gay happiness — whether that be in fan fiction or maybe one day on the big screen.

I Still Can’t Believe Marvel’s Never Heard of Bisexuality

I Still Can’t Believe is a TV Team series where we remember the things happened on television that baffle us — in good and bad ways — to this very day.

I’ve been rewatching all the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies in timeline order because I caught a glimpse of both Tessa Thompson with a lightsaber and Cate Blanchett in that leather suit when Thor: Ragnorak was on TV the other day, and I thought to myself, “No, Hoagie, you need to earn that.” So I started with Steve Rogers in World War II, like good nerds do. I’m not even through MCU Phase One and already I’ve found myself yelling, “Kiss! KISS!” at Bucky and Steve; and, “GAY YOU’RE GAY!” at Maria Rambeau and Carol Danvers, like I did in my head when I saw these things in theaters.

That against the backdrop of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Disney+’s latest Marvel entry, which featured Bucky and Sam Wilson getting gayer by the episode — going to couples therapy, rolling around on top of each other the grass, browsing other men holding tigers on dating apps — while the show’s writers and directors gave interviews after basically every episode laughing about “Ha, ha, ha! Yes, we can see why you’d think that’s gay due to it looking and sounding gay, but it’s not gay!”

I still can’t believe, in 2021, that Marvel’s never heard of bisexuality!

Carol and Maria sit at Maria's kitchen table.

Captain Marvel is so gay that the writers had to add a line of dialogue to try to convince the audience Maria and Carol slept in different rooms.

Carol, Maria, and Monica: one happy family (until WandaVision)

You know, on account of the house they shared and the daughter they were raising together.

Let’s just start with the easiest thing: The MCU characters who are already queer in the comic books. There’s Valkyrie, played by real life queer human Tessa Thompson. There’s Loki, who is also genderfluid in the comics. And, more recently, there’s Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Star-Lord. Then there are Marvel characters who aren’t in the MCU, like X-Men’s Mystique and Deadpool. None of them have been canonically queer on-screen, even though promises persist and Ryan Reynolds is insisting Deadpool be gay when the character is folded into the MCU. How easy it would have been — and still would be! — to have any of them smooch on another queer person, or even a queer alien! So easy! Just so easy! Smashing your mouth against someone else’s mouth is, in my expert opinion, a lot easier than wearing a harness attached to springs and wires and pretending to fly!

Okay but, let’s say there’s no more room for new characters in MCU movies. Ten million characters is enough. Fine. Fair. What about the characters who are already very clearly in love with each other and have filmed scenes with both action and dialogue that prove it? Maria Rambeau and Carol Danvers, just for one example. Living together, working together, raising a daughter together, running at each other against the setting sun crying and clutching at each other while making promises and saying how they’re the only ones who ever knew who the other person really was, how they only ever believed in and were at home with each other.

Pepper and Natasha work together in Iron Man 2

Do people ship us? Sure. Are we very clearly gay for each other? No. There is, even, a symbolic man between us right now.

When two women are not very clearly gay on-screen together, they are filmed like Pepper Potts and Black Widow in Iron Man 2: side-by-side looking at stuff that’s not each other, talking about stuff that’s not each other, and going their separate ways at the end of the movie without any acknowledgment of when they might see each other again. They walk beside each other and the camera invites you to look at them, instead of showing you how they can’t stop looking at each other.

When two women are very clearly gay for each other on-screen, they are filmed the way so many bazillion cishet scenes have been filmed before: staring longingly at each other, getting closer and closer to each other, never breaking eye-contact, never talking about other love interests, eyes and body language only for each other, each separation significant. LIKE MARIA AND CAROL.

Has there been anyone else?

You know there hasn’t.

It’s the same for Bucky and Steve, of course, and then Bucky and Sam, in the Captain America world. The way they live and die for each other, pine and grieve for each other, put their faces really close together and lie on top of each other, risk it all to keep the other one safe/bring the other one back from the dead. Bucky gets classically, heterosexually fridged as a motivating plot device for Steve! Bucky comments flirtily that Steve should keep his full-body spandex Captain America suit! Bucky literally says to Steve, “I am with you until the end of time” like some kind of Disney prince!

Okay, now, using “I feel” statements, why don’t we talk about how you both feel about Steve Rogers, because, let’s be honest, this could get weird.

Look, we are living in a time when TikTok has declared everyone under the age of 25 queer, in a year when gay people are such a lucrative market that Disney is making its own line of Pride apparel, and when A-list actors are begging to be gay in big budget comic book movies. There’s no excuse for these straight shenanigans anymore. Bisexuality already exists in MCU’s movies. Marvel just needs to acknowledge it. Or, at the very least, stop denying it.

Pop Culture Fix: Wait, Captain Marvel Is For Real Getting a Girlfriend?

Welcome to your first Pop Culture Fix of 2020, friends!

+ I don’t know how legit this is, but maybe Captain Marvel is getting a girlfriend?

+ Also: Marvel Studios president teases trans character for upcoming film.

+ Angelica Ross and Munroe Bergdorf discuss a decade in trans rights.

+ 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days has the franchise’s first same-sex couple.

+ Lena Waithe’s Twenties has a premiere date.

+ Lily Tomlin finally got arrested with Jane Fonda!

+ How Batwoman arrived at just the right time for Rachel Skarsten.

+ Culture in the 2010s was obsessed with finding community — and building walls

+ Destruction and obsession tangle in an arresting dance in cheerleading thriller Dare Me (which is gay!)

+ Glamour’s 104 women who defined the decade in pop culture (including: Kristen Stewart, Sarah Paulson, Laverne Cox, Tarana Burke, Lilly Singh, Ellen, and Caitlyn Jenner)

+ The Atlantic‘s ten best movie scenes of the decade includes Carol and Moonlight

15 Gayest Moments From “Avengers: Endgame,” Which Was Great But Unfortunately Not Gay

Have you heard of this little movie called Avengers: Endgame? It only made over a billion dollars last weekend. Yes, I said Billion with a capital B. I’m the biggest Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) nerd. I’m writing this article from a desk that has Valkyrie, Princess Shuri, and Okoye bobbleheads to my right. I’ve seen 19 of the 22 Marvel movies more than once (sorry Dr. Strange and Iron Man!). I’ve seen all the ones with major women characters at least five times and I’ve seen Black Panther at least ten times in the last year alone. I saw Endgame opening night. I was built for this moment.

I’m a gay geek girl who loves being gay, and when I watch movies all I look for or see is The Gayness^TM. That’s even true in movies like The Avengers franchise, which admittedly doesn’t give a girl a lot to work with. But nevertheless, she persisted. Here are 15 gay and/or feminist nuggets of gold from Endgame that I cannot wait to re-live in obsessive, snarky detail with you!

Two things before we begin:

1. THERE ARE ENDGAME SPOILERS BELOW!! If you read past this sentence, you are agreeing to read spoilers so please don’t go in the comments and go all, “You just ruined my entire life Carmen!” I am not Thanos. I am not here to snap my fingers and end lives. I just want a peanut butter sandwich before the day’s end, ok?

2. I’m not including this moment in my list because we covered it pretty thoroughly last week, but just in case you missed Brie Lawson and Tessa Thompson continuing their advocacy for a Captain Marvel/Valkyrie team up, check below.

https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1120494373597216769

OK! Now we’re all set!

15. That One Background Gay Dude Went on His Big Gay Date

Avengers: Endgame finally gave the MCU it’s first on-screen gay character. He was an unnamed background character with under two minutes of screen-time in the first third of a three-hour movie.

*Golf Claps*

The character, played by Endgame co-director Joe Russo, appeared in a survivor’s support group following The Big Snap. He shares a story of going on his first date since the incident, casually explaining that he and his date — another man — both cried during the meal.The Russo Brothers told Deadline that it was important that there be a gay character in the Avengers goodbye. They went on to say, “We felt it was important that one of us play him, to ensure the integrity and show it is so important to the filmmakers that one of us is representing that. It is a perfect time, because one of the things that is compelling about the Marvel Universe moving forward is its focus on diversity.”

Which…. I mean, fine, yes, we all want more diversity on-screen. But if they were serious about having a gay character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe I’d like to point the Russo Brothers to the numerous other superheroes who are already in their movies and are already gay in the freakin’ comics!!! After 11 years and 22 movies, a background side character is just not a good look, boo.

And it looks like Brie Larson agrees with me! In her interview with Variety this weekend, Captain Marvel said that it breaks her heart that LGBTQ+ folks still don’t have supercharged representation on the big screen. Calling out Marvel, the actress said, “I don’t understand how you could think that a certain type of person isn’t allowed to be a superhero. So to me it’s like, we gotta move faster. But I’m always wanting to move faster with this stuff.”

Oh Captain, My Captain.

14. Black Widow Got Fridged

In addition to its bare minimum lip service to LGBT+ representation, they pulled out the oldest – and most sexist – superhero trope in the book! They fridged the only woman member of the so-called “Core Six” Avengers, Black Widow!

If you’re unfamiliar with “Fridging,” it’s a storytelling decision where a woman is hurt or killed as a plot device intended to move a male character’s arc forward. It gets it name from an incident in the Green Lantern comics where the title hero comes home to his apartment to find out his girlfriend, Alexandra DeWitt, has been killed and stuffed in a refrigerator. My dear friends, Black Widow sacrifices herself so that Hawkeye can learn from his past violent mistakes and grow back into the family man he used to be. That’s classic fridging 101 and frankly, it’s pretty disgusting that the MCU would even go there – even more so because they have barely ever done right by Black Widow in the past.

Anyhow, Fridging is gay because of “Bury Your Gays.” RIP Black Widow. We’ll remember you with honor, even when your own film franchise did not.

13. Carol Being Incredibly Unimpressed by Thor’s Big “Stormbreaker”

Men Everywhere: Oh, look at my weapon! It’s soooo big! It’s sooo cool!
Lesbians: *crickets* *yawn* *crickets*

May we all take that righteous energy into our week. Praise Melissa Etheridge, Amen.

12. Black Widow Holding the Entire Avengers Team Together During the Five Year Hiatus Because All the Men Gave Up

11. Scarlet Witch Out Here Quoting Destiny’s Child and Telling Thanos, “Say My Name”

Scarlet Witch: You took everything from me.
Thanos: I don’t even know who you are.
Scarlet Witch: You Will.

A reoccurring theme on this list is “Man Underestimates Woman, Man Gets His Ass Beat” – which is some Big Dyke (or Bi; I’m not here to police your head canons) Energy if I’ve ever seen it.

10. Nebula and Gamora’s Entire Storyline Is a Tribute to Sisterhood and Surviving

Nebula and Gamora’s relationship has been, ummmmm, complicated now for two Guardians movies and one Infinity War now. And while yes, their relationship is familial and platonic – not romantic – the gentleness that Nebula takes toward her arch nemesis when she tells her that in another universe, “We became sisters,” is enough to clench any heart. The fact that in the middle of a three-hour action time traveling blockbuster is the tale of two women, once enemies, who sacrificed everything to believe in each other and trust that the strength between them would finally be enough to take down their mutual abuser – I still get a little teary, just thinking about it.

(And also, if I was really going to go there I’d write an entire soliloquy about how Nebula’s past self’s violent hatred for her future self, and their subsequent battle to the death, is an allegory for conquering internalized homophobia. But you know, we ain’t got time today.)

9. Captain Marvel Putting Thanos in a Headlock

Did I enter this into the Top Ten because of how incredibly sexy it was to see Carol Danvers do what every male superhero before her could not, which was take the God of Death between her freaking biceps like it was absolutely nothing, as if it was some run of the mill bar fight?

Probably, I did. But it’s still true though.

8. Captain Marvel Carrying an Entire Fucking Spaceship on Her Back

Yep. See my previous point about including all the action points of Carol Danvers’ storyline in Endgame just because it’s incredibly attractive to me personally. 👆🏾

But also, SHE CARRIED AN ENTIRE SPACE SHIP ON HER BACK!!!! And not just like “oh she picked it up and then put it back down.” No. Carol Danvers put an entire ship on her mother loving back and carried it from the outer rims of the universe safely back to earth. Have you ever swooned at the Home Depot lesbian who put that really heavy slab of wood on her shoulder and carried it back to her truck without breaking a sweat. Well then. Can you even imagine!?!?

7. This Alignment Chart, Which Isn’t Technically About Endgame, but Damn It’s Too Perfect to Not Be Included on This List

LISTEN OK BECAUSE WE ARE ABOUT TO BLOW YOUR MIND:

A thousand thanks to Emily Armadillo on Tumblr. When you’re right, you’re right.

6. Okoye’s Entire Existence (But Also: See Her Outfit in the Funeral Scene)

Here’s a few things about me and Black Panther’s Okoye. Actually, no I just lied to you because there aren’t many things. There is just one thing. That one thing is that Okoye is a queer black woman who is in a loving and satisfying relationship with Ayo, one of the fellow members of the Dora Milaje. Marvel can try and hide it, they can leave her lesbian relationship on the cutting room floor, they can force Okoye into an on-screen straight romance, it will not matter – I will never forget.

So it came as no surprise to me that when Okoye showed up along with the rest of the Wakandan delegation for Engame’s funeral scene, she’d be a heart stopper. Her dress gave me Hard Femme EVERYTHING. It wasn’t until I left the theater that I realized I’d seen Okoye in a similar outfit before. She flaunts a duplicate off the shoulder cut-out all black dress during the mid-credits scene of Black Panther.

This is the dress.

A femme who knows her angles and appreciates the importance of recycling? We Stan.

5. Carol’s Outfit in the Funeral Scene

Let’s talk about her high collar jet black suit at the funeral. Let’s talk about how she stood alone, proud, watching over the rest of the Avengers. Let’s talk about how her jaw was clenched and her posture was perfect. The swag of it, y’all. Raw. Unbridled. I’m overwhelmed by the memory alone.

4. The Women of the MCU Finally FINALLY Banning Together

The Final Battle. Spider Man has the gauntlet and sees no way forward down the battlefield. He’s panicked. Then, in a bolt of neon orange and yellow light, Captain Marvel stands before him. She grabs the gauntlet, ready to take it that last mile.

He pauses, scared, wondering if she can do it alone.

And just like that, EVERY WOMAN SUPERHERO OF THE LAST 22 FILMS STANDS BEFORE HER. You shiver as the camera pans across them. Your mouth goes a little dry in awe and wonder.

https://multi-parker.tumblr.com/post/184505720210/dont-worry-shes-got-help

I’m glad Captain Marvel’s gonna be OK, but who is going to help me??

3. PS: Valkyrie Fights Almost Exclusively from Riding on Top of Pegasus

We’re at the final three now, so you know who’s got to show up: None other than Marvel bisexual badass herself, Valkyrie.

Admittedly, Valkyrie’s already the gayest person who walks in to pretty much any room. And yes, she’s yet another Marvel character whose character is canonically queer in their comics, but whose woman love interest met the brutal end of the MCU editing floor. But Valkyrie wielding her sword while she’s flying on top of a winged horse that might as well have been a damn unicorn? THE. GAYEST.

Like, go ahead and poop rainbows out of that horse’s butt levels of gayness.

2. Oh Yeah, and Then Thor Hands Over the Entire Future of Asgard to Valkyrie!

If you keep up with the Marvel comics, you maybe saw this one coming. In 2014, Thor’s long term love interest Dr. Jane Foster (we know her as Natalie Portman in the movies), picks up his famous hammer and becomes the series’ new hero. Still, I never thought the movie would go there. I never thought that the MCU’s Thor would ever give up his kingdom, let alone to his bisexual woman right hand.

Just as Thor prepares to leave New Asgard, Captain America also hands over his shield to Falcon/Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), mirroring yet another comic book ending. With Falcon and Valkyrie at the helm carrying on those franchises, the future of the MCU suddenly looks a little bit browner and (hopefully) queerer than it ever did before.

1. We All Knew It Would End Here: Carol’s Haircut

The boss up of the century, it’s as if Marvel decided to give up any pretense. Oh no, they leaned all the way in.

There are times when even something as simple as aesthetics matter. Where a haircut can feel like it’s heard around the world. This is one of those times. When the final battle occurs and all of the Avengers are on the ropes and it looks like Thanos is going to win once and for all – who breaks through in a glowing orb of rage? Who punches the sky and saves the day? This woman, with the most iconic lesbian haircut of all time. This woman who dresses and and acts like a lesbian, who is scared of no man. She saves their ass.

Yes, I want Carol Danvers to be a lesbian whose love life on-screen is more than only our collective imagination. Brie Larson wants it, too. I’m not here to celebrate subtext on its own. But there’s an entire generation of girls who are now going to see this strong woman, who’s coded as a lesbian, and they are going to be told that it’s cool. That it’s admirable. Not that it’s gross or ugly. Not that they should run from it. That they, too, could save the day.

Sure, it’s also a tribute to Carol’s haircut in the comics, but c’mon – let’s give this big ole massive point to #TeamGay. Carol’s debut of her big chop was superhero version of that time Kristen Stewart made every queer woman in America swoon with these five simple words:

And for Captain Marvel in that haircut, so say we all.

“Captain Marvel” Is More Kickass Than Our Wildest Dreams

Mild spoilers below for Captain Marvel!

If I were a man invested, even subconsciously, in propping up a patriarchal society where women, even subconsciously, Know Their Place, Captain Marvel would terrify the pants off of me. Which is why MRA Reddit started review bombing it weeks before it was released. And why half the reviews from professional male critics — who take up 100% of the top spots on Rotten Tomatoes’ Captain Marvel landing page — basically say, “I don’t get it.” And why the dude sitting beside me in the theater at the opening show in New York City got up and moved, with a loud huff, to the other side of his girlfriend when I cackled first and loudest during a scene where the robot voice of a threat-scanning device ranked Carol’s cat, Goose, as “high” and “human male” as “low to none.”

There’s an interview with Brie Larson during the Captain Marvel press tour where a male reporter from Yahoo! asks her if the scene where a man tells Carol to smile was added after the first promo photos were released and men on the internet complained that she wasn’t smiling enough. With a clenched jaw, Larson says, “That was already in the movie. We’d already shot that… That’s just a depiction of the female experience.”

The female experience, in fact, is woven inextricably into the fabric of Captain Marvel. From childhood to high school to boot camp to flight school to outer space, Carol Danvers was knocked down, physically and metaphorically, by the men surrounding her — and she got up and she got up and she got up. And she became the most powerful superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the one upon whom the fate of all the other superheroes, and humanity itself, rests. That’s how she came to us: When Iron Man and Hulk and Captain America and Thor and Dr. Strange and Spider-Man failed, in the closing tag of Avengers: Infinity War, Nick Fury called for the most capable hero he knew: Carol Danvers.

Like all origin stories, Captain Marvel is about how Carol got her powers and how she learned to use them. Also like all origin stories, Captain Marvel is about how the love of a good woman empowered our hero to overcome her fears and her trauma and save the world. Marvel’s first solo film about a female superhero boasts some of the best action sequences I’ve ever seen; it is also straight-up written, directed, acted, filmed, and edited like an epic love story between Carol Danvers and Maria Rambeau. They keep saying “best friends,” but the score and the lighting and the dialogue and the camera angles and the fact that they are essentially raising a child and a cat together says something different.

Maria trained alongside Carol, flew alongside Carol. She saved all of Carol’s things after she disappeared; and her daughter, Monica, knows, by heart, the story behind every single one of the childhood photos Carol left behind. Maria doesn’t hang out on earth, fretting for Carol’s safety when she jets off to space to fight the bad guys; she’s her kickass co-pilot (and we haven’t seen the last of her daughter either). The mightiest superhero in the galaxy is a woman who doesn’t need a man because she already has a woman (and, in fact, a black woman who can fly fighter jets and spaceships)? Yeah, that might also be why straight white men “don’t get” this movie.

The other essential feminist component of Captain Marvel is also a theme in Wonder Woman, in large part because it was baked into the original comics by William Moulton Marston, a man who sincerely believed matriarchal rule was the only way to save humanity from itself. Carol’s mentor (also a woman, but no spoilers) tells her she’s not working to figure out how to win wars; she’s working to figure out how to end them.

In addition to the action stuff and the True Love stuff, Captain Marvel is a buddy comedy between Carol and Nick Fury, and it’s his origin story a little bit too. There’s a lot of ground to cover. Decades, really. Captain Marvel has to introduce Carol, infuse her with powers, teach her distinguish the good guys from the bad guys, anchor her humanity in love for another human, showcase her saving the world for the first time, and connect her with the genesis of the Avengers and their current battle. All of those factors combine for a slow start, but once the movie got going, it left me breathless.

During the first end-credit scene (there are two; stay for both), the man who moved to the other side of his girlfriend because the feminist energy coming off me in waves was freaking him out, yelped in delight. Carol Danvers had won him over. But she wouldn’t care. Carol Danvers has nothing to prove to any man. Captain Marvel wasn’t made for him; it was made for me and you and every little Monica Rambeau who’s dreamed of the power to punch a nuclear missile out of the sky, or to wipe the smirk off the face of a man who told us to smile.

“Captain Marvel” Trailer: Carol Danvers’ Outfits, Ranked by Lesbianism

The Captain Marvel trailer finally arrived this morning and, correctly, broke Twitter because it looks amazing.

I noticed something in the trailer that I also noticed in the first promo pics: Carol Danvers is dressed gay as all heck for this whole entire movie. I mean, I know basically every woman was dressed gay in the ’90s, all that leather and flannel and everything, but Carol Danvers’ wardrobe is next level. We will discuss this trailer in the comments, but first I will rank Captain Marvel’s outfits by lesbianism.