The Marvels: How the MCU’s New Superhero Trinity Is Connected

Marvel Studios may have skipped this year’s Comic-Con, but they did give us a consolation prize in the form of a new trailer for The Marvels. This new trailer sheds more light on the plot of the Captain Marvel sequel and gives us a better look at Zawe Ashton’s villain, Dar-Benn. But above all, it gives us a better idea of the dynamic between Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers, Teyonah Parris’ Monica Rambeau and Iman Vellani’s Kamala Khan.

Together, these three heroes form a new trinity in the MCU. But why these three? How are Carol, Monica and Kamala connected in the comics, and how is the MCU strengthening those connections now? Here’s what you need to know about the three leading ladies in The Marvels.

The Marvels In the Comics

While there’s no formal super-team called The Marvels in Marvel’s comic book universe, Carol, Monica and Kamala certainly have a long shared history together. More than with most Marvel characters, the Captain Marvel mantle is defined by legacy. It’s been passed down from hero to hero over the years, and Carol herself wasn’t even the first to use the name (she’s actually the seventh, for those keeping score). The original Captain Marvel was Kree hero Mar-Vell, who was portrayed in the first movie by Annette Bening. 

In fact, Carol was originally introduced as Ms. Marvel, gaining her powers after being caught in an explosion that merged her human DNA with Mar-Vell’s Kree genetics. Her rewritten genetic code gave Carol super-strength, flight, invulnerability and a “seventh sense” of cosmic awareness. Carol would later adopt other codenames like Warbird and Binary. It wasn’t until 2012 that Carol officially inherited the Captain Marvel name and first donned the red and blue costume that’s become so iconic.

Monica Rambeau was actually the first to inherit the mantle from Mar-Vell, becoming the new Captain Marvel and leader of the Avengers in the ‘80s. She gained her powers after being exposed to extra-dimensional energy, allowing her to transform her body into any wavelength on the electromagnetic spectrum. Like Carol, Monica has cycled through several codenames over the years, including Photon, Pulsar and Spectrum (the latter of which she goes by in the MCU). It’s also worth pointing out that while Carol and Monica have become friends in the comics, their lives aren’t as closely intertwined as they are in the MCU.  

Kamala Khan is a relative newcomer to the Marvel Universe, having debuted in Marvel’s 2014 Ms. Marvel series. After exposure to the Terrigen Mists activates her latent Inhuman gene, Kamala gains the power to “embiggen” herself, stretching and growing her body at will. Kamala is a hardcore Carol Danvers fangirl, hence why she took up the Ms. Marvel codename in tribute to her favorite hero. You can imagine her glee the first time she and Carol actually teamed up.

More recently, Marvel has begun to tweak Kamala’s backstory to bring her more closely in line with the MCU version. Kamala was killed in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man, but Marvel has already revealed that she’ll return and somehow be reborn as a mutant. It remains to be seen whether her powers will be changed accordingly.

The Marvels In the MCU

Compared to the comics, the MCU has worked to link Carol Danvers, Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan together from the ground up. In the MCU, Carol is the first (and thus far only) person to use the Captain Marvel codename. 2019’s Captain Marvel established that Carol was extremely close to Monica’s mother Maria (Lashana Lynch), a fellow Air Force pilot. That basically makes Carol the cool aunt to Monica, though we know her prolonged absence from Earth will put a major strain on their friendship in The Marvels.

“The way I was able to tap into it and understand it is the concept that Carol kind of became a workaholic, and she lost touch with her heart and with family and friends,” Larson told EW. “That’s certainly something I can relate to.”

WandaVision adds further context to that rift, revealing that Monica was among those snapped out of existence by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War. By the time Monica returned in The Blip, Maria had already passed away from cancer. Monica seems to resent her old friend Carol for not being there when Maria needed her the most. 

Monica seems to resent her old friend Carol for not being there when Maria needed her the most. 

WandaVision is also where Monica gains her energy manipulation powers, a side effect of being exposed to Scarlet Witch’s magic in Westview, NJ. And with Monica now serving as an agent of Nick Fury’s space agency S.A.B.E.R., she’s being put on a collision course with the workaholic Captain Marvel. 

Kamala Khan was introduced in the Ms. Marvel series on Disney+. Similar to the comics, Kamala is a hardcore superhero fangirl with a particular obsession with Captain Marvel. When her superhuman powers begin to manifest, Kamala happily dubs herself Ms. Marvel and follows in Carol’s footsteps. 

The main difference from the comics, however, is that the MCU’s Kamala Khan isn’t an Inhuman. Her mystical bangle (a family heirloom with cosmic origins) unlocks her latent Noor power and gives Kamala the ability to manipulate energy. No embiggening for this Ms. Marvel. The series also ends with the revelation that Kamala is a mutant, making her the first official mutant in the MCU (but certainly not the last).

The Marvels’ Powers and Ms. Marvel’s Bangle

The three Marvels are much more closely connected in terms of powers in the MCU. All three can manipulate cosmic energy in different ways, whether it’s Carol firing powerful energy blasts or Monica being able to see and absorb energy. On some fundamental level, their powers appear to be linked.

Kamala’s bangle may hold the key to that connection. In the Ms. Marvel series, we learn that the bangle allows Kamala to manipulate energy from the Noor Dimension. The Clandestine family seek out that bangle and its companion in order to return home. Based on the new trailer for the Marvels, it appears that Dar-Benn is instead the one who finds the lost second bangle and unlocks its latent power. 

Somehow, the discovery of that second bangle results in a phenomenon where Carol, Monica and Kamala trade places whenever they use their powers. Given what we know about the bangles, they may actually be opening portals to the Noor Dimension and bouncing back and forth between the MCU and that other realm. The movie may establish that Carol and Monica are also tapping into the Noor Dimension when they use their energy powers. 

What we don’t know is what Dar-Benn is trying to accomplish with the second bangle. Is she trying to activate her latent super-powers in the same way Kamala inadvertently did with her bangle? Is she building an army of Kree super-soldiers? Given the Kree’s obsession with genetics and improving their race, this is certainly possible. But because Dar-Benn doesn’t appear to be based on an existing Marvel Comics character, it’s hard to know exactly where the movie is headed with its villain.

MCU fans have begun to speculate that the bangles are connected to the Ten Rings worn by Tony Leung’s Wenwu in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. The design of both artifacts is similar, and it’s possible they both draw power from similarly extra-dimensional sources. Some have even speculated that these two artifacts may be tied to Kang the Conqueror’s plans, making them the plot-driving equivalent of the Infinity Stones in the upcoming Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. It’s an interesting theory, and hopefully we’ll learn more about the nature of these cosmic bangles with The Marvels hits theaters in November 2023.

For more on the MCU, brush up on every Marvel movie and show in development and learn why this year’s Comic-Con is such a disappointment on the MCU front. 

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.