Carol Danvers apparently needs no man in her life. At least, that’s what Kevin Feige said recently in an interview with Screen Rant, when he talked about how Carol has no male love interest in the film. Feige also spoke about Carol’s relationship to Maria Rambeau, and why it was so important, yet shied away from calling it the film’s love story as if it wasn’t the emotional heart of the piece.
Feige told them, “Well that was something as we were developing the script and queuing off of the comics as always, it never even occurred to have a love interest. That’s not what the movie was about. It was about Carol finding herself and growing and making mistakes and being bolstered up by her female mentors and female friends. And that relationship with Maria was very important.”
He’s right: The film did not need a love interest in the traditional sense of a Marvel-esque bantering, will-they-won’t-they couple. Carol was breaking free from an oppressive regime that was gaslighting her and that had abducted her. She needed to grow on her own, as well as through her relationships with Maria and Mar-Vell. I would also argue her friendship with Fury is equally important, as he helps her realize that she’s a good soldier and person on her own.
This is not to say that a woman can’t have a love interest and be strong at the same time. I love the relationship between Diana and Steve in Wonder Woman, and think that’s a good example of a love story not dominating a woman’s arc (though I’m sure some will find that a controversial opinion). Love does not automatically equal weakness; while a bad love plot can dominate a woman’s story, a well-handled one can strengthen it.
Carol’s story also proved that women don’t automatically need a love story. Her film was fine on its own without needing a (probably male) figure playing a romantic role in her life. However, I will argue that Feige is wrong in saying there is no love interest or love story, when Carol’s friendship with Maria served as the love plot of the film. This is something Brie Larson is on the record as saying was the romance of the film.
Feige went on to say that “initially we were like, is that bond [between Maria and Carol] going to be strong enough? Are we having not experienced it in real time upfront when they get to Louisiana? Is it going to land? And we saw the audition and then the dailies. Oh it’s landing there. They’re amazing.”
Both Larson and Lashana Lynch are amazing, but it’s odd that Feige wouldn’t call their story a love story when it had the emotional through line of the film. The fact that their relationship was written as platonic and intended to be a story of female friendship does not negate it from being a love story. Friendships can be love stories, as well.
This is hard water to navigate, because as much as I ship Carol and Maria, I also doubt that they were written as love interests, because Marvel has a long and storied history of giving same-gender relationships a lot of emotional depth and then pulling back before making them romantic. I also liked that there was no traditional love story in Captain Marvel.
At the same time, I love Carol/Maria, and if anyone is Carol’s love interest in the film, it’s Maria. I want to believe that the writers intended their story, romantic or platonic, to be the love story of the film. Hopefully, we get more with the Rambeau family in later films, and hopefully Carol is revealed to be canonically queer in a later story.
I just want a queer Marvel hero at some point before the inevitable heat death of the universe. Is that too much to ask?
(via ComicBookMovie.com, image: Marvel)
Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
