Captain Marvel: Every MCU Movie/Event It Sets Up

5. The Avengers (2012)

It wasn't just the Avengers Initiative that Captain Marvel set up, but some of the key elements of 2012's The Avengers too.

Of course there's the obvious stuff, such as Carol's callsign inspiring the name and even her presence redefining Nick Fury's outlook on the world, but it's worth mentioning just how important the Tesseract was too.

The Cosmic Cube first made its appearance in the MCU during Captain America: The First Avenger, where it's retrieved by the Red Skull from a Norwegian church. After that, it's last seen hurtling towards the Arctic surface while Cap is fighting with Schmidt on his plane, and is later recovered by Howard Stark in his attempts to find the Captain's body. It is next seen in the Avengers, but it is through Captain Marvel that we discover how it fell into S.H.I.EL.D.'s hands.

Goose, Captain Marvel's loveable Flerken, consumes the Cube while the group escape from the Kree aboard Mar-Vell's laboratory. Later, we see that Goose coughs up the Tesseract on Nick Fury's desk, filling in the final piece of the puzzle in regards to how it got to S.H.I.E.L.D. in the first place.

Also referenced in Captain Marvel is Project Pegasus. The name is only briefly mentioned in the Avengers, but it's the designated name for S.H.I.E.L.D's research into the Cube. In Captain Marvel, Pegasus is the project designation for Wendy Lawson's (Mar-Vell) research into lightspeed travel, which of course used the cube as its fuel source.