Captain Marvel: What Does The Ending Really Mean?

4. Captain Marvel Is Just Beginning To Realise Her Full Potential

A lot of Captain Marvel finds the titular character being told to hide her emotions. Yon-Rogg attempts to make her keep these in check, saying they'll make her weak. That means, although we get flashes of her power throughout the film, there's generally something being held back until the very end. At that point, with the truth of her origins discovered, she realises it's her humanity that stands her apart from the other Kree and helps make her powerful. That by being allowed to be emotional (and in a literal representation of this, removing the Kree implant that limits her), she can truly unleash her powers.

Marvel goes on a rampage after that, flying around as a one-woman wrecking crew against Ronan's missiles, battering the Kree, and taking out Yon-Rogg too. It's an impressive display, with her powers including photon blasts and the ability to fly.

It's great, but is it the best we're going to see from Captain Marvel? Almost certainly not. It's previously been said that she will be the most powerful hero in the MCU, and there's not quite enough here to suggest she's at that level yet. In the comics, Danvers goes to another level when she's experimented on by another alien race - the Brood - which allows her to draw upon the power of a white hole. It's here Captain Marvel becomes Binary, who goes up a whole other level on the power scale, including full control and manipulation of stellar energies, and therefore control over heat, the electromagnetic spectrum and gravity. That's the kind of thing that would make her an undisputed #1, and something we'll perhaps come to see over her time in the MCU.