Captain Marvel: Every MCU Movie/Event It Sets Up

6. The Entirety Of Phase One

Marvel Studios

Although everyone expected Captain Marvel to bear some influence on Marvel's older movies, fans may not have predicted just how much the film would.

Captain Marvel is, from what we know so far, the first major superhero to have existed in the MCU since Captain America during the Second World War. She's the one who crashes to Earth and sparks Fury to reconsider his entire approach to defence and peacekeeping, going so far as to use her original callsign, 'Avenger', as the inspiration for the Avengers Initiative.

But, going beyond the most literal manifestations of Danvers' legacy, her presence also begets Fury's entire shift in character. Sure, she gets a helping hand from Goose in that regard, but she's the one who encourages him to seek out other extraordinary beings, such as Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, and not preemptively treat them as a threat.

Without Carol crashing into that Blockbuster in '95, it's doubtful he would've had the same attitude, making her one of the most important Marvel characters in the space of just a month.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.