Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch)
With all of the ‘Captain Marvel’ news breaking, thanks to Entertainment Weekly‘s cover story, a lot of rumors have been debunked, but one seems to have been true all along… kind of. British actor Lashana Lynch stepped in to replace DeWanda Wise, the star of Netflix’s ‘She’s Gotta Have It’, in the upcoming Marvel flick, but while it was originally reported that Wise had been cast as Marvel’s second Captain Marvel, Monica Rambeau, it was quickly hushed up as to which role she was playing. After Wise had to depart in order to film the second season of her Netflix show, Lynch, who will star on the upcoming FX series ‘Y’ based on the DC/Vertigo comic ‘Y: The Last Man’, stepped in, but once again, her exact role wasn’t disclosed.
But now, it has been confirmed. She is NOT playing Monica Rambeau. Instead, she is playing MARIA Rambeau, a fighter pilot who fought alongside Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) during her Air Force days on Earth. Maria Rambeau is also a single mother to a daughter named… Monica.
Regarding her character, Lynch said:
“Maria’s got a strength that’s undeniable, in that you don’t feel like you need to help her. She is thrown into many a situation in this movie that she’s never been a part of, never seen, never experienced — and she just learns it, immediately. She’s very resilient and very strong.”
Her pilot code name is “Photon” which is the second superhero alias used by Monica Rambeau, after she gave the name “Captain Marvel” over to Genis-Vell, the son of the first Captain Marvel, the Kree soldier Mar-Vell, who may or may not be played by Jude Law in the film.
‘Captain Marvel’ is a flashback, set in the 1990s. It’s still unclear exactly how the movie will unfold as it appears that the film will pick up after Carol gains her superpowers and is an active member of the Kree super-team Starforce. But there may be flashbacks-within-a-flashback to her time as an ordinary human who is also a fighter pilot.
What this means for Lynch’s character is that she is the mother of Monica Rambeau, meaning that in the modern day Marvel Cinematic Universe, Monica is an adult and could come to possess superpowers of her own and adopt her own super identity. Obviously, she won’t be Captain Marvel, as Larson’s character will have that name, but she could adopt the name Photon or even Spectrum, the latest alias used by Monica in the comics. (She was also Pulsar for a while. It’s a long dumb story that Marvel Comics should be pretty damn ashamed of, to be honest.)
‘Captain Marvel’, directed by Anan Boden and Ryan Fleck, stars Brie Larson, Ben Mendelsohn, Gemma Chan, Clark Gregg, Djimon Hounsou, Samuel L. Jackson, Jude Law and Lee Pace, and arrives in theaters on March 8, 2019.
