On today’s episode of “Things We Were All Better Off Not Knowing,” the spotlight is on The Marvels, one of the latest victims of Marvel Studios’ recent, incomprehensibly dense approach to serialized storytelling.
Speaking recently to ComicBook.com, Zawe Ashton—who portrayed the film’s villain Dar-Benn—revealed that an alternate ending to The Marvels was filmed in which Carol Danvers met her demise, for some reason:
“There was another ending that we did film where Brie and myself are kind of in space still having it out, and they kind of combust together, which was really amazing. And that was just a day on wires hanging out with Brie, which is surreal and fun. But yeah, there were a few different plans, I think.”
Now, it is hard to doubt that the experience filming the scene was, in fact, a lot of fun. But let’s break down the nuances of this revelation here: If Marvel had the death of Carol Danvers just stored in its back pocket like that, it means that, on some level, they were prepared to actually, canonically kill her off. This in turn poses the question of why on Earth they would ever think that killing off Carol at this point is a good idea, even if they had a whole other movie’s worth of scenes secretly filmed and at the ready to try to make it make sense.
No matter how you cut it, Captain Marvel simply has not been given the proper time or space to inhabit a significant or satisfying character arc with respect to the baggage she still carries, and especially with how highly she’s been established both in- and out-of-universe, killing her off in a film as regrettably unceremonious as The Marvels just might have been the most profoundly bad decision they could have made.
They didn’t make the decision, of course, but it’s the fact that they considered killing Carol off enough to film a whole scene for it that really sheds a light on the absolute clown fiesta that the studio brings to every decision-making chokepoint. In this case, it shows a dire lack of any real plan going forward, meaning the studio probably hardly has a grasp on what these upcoming films could even hope to accomplish on any storytelling level, further demonstrated by the fact that they treated the death of Captain Marvel of all people as some random Jenga block that they could just slide in and out of the script as they saw fit.
Deadpool, my guy, my dude, my homie, you need to show Disney how it’s done. I can’t take this anymore.
(featured image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
