Captain Marvel is possibly the most well-connected movie in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Set in 1995, the film is essentially a prequel to the entire MCU, and the post-credits scene confirms that it's essential viewing on the journey to Avengers: Endgame. Captain Marvel has finally made her MCU debut, and her power levels are off the charts.

But Captain Marvel is a particularly unusual film. The last time Marvel did a period piece was back in 2011, with Captain America: The First Avenger, and there was real concern that the Captain Marvel movie could cause major continuity problems. Although it's not without a few minor continuity issues, though, the film is remarkably well-connected. Unusually for the movies, it doesn't even contradict anything that's been established by Marvel Television's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.; the Kree have been featured quite prominently in the TV series, so the potential for problems was most definitely real. But even the Kree technology shown in Captain Marvel dovetails perfectly with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..

RELATED: Captain Marvel: EVERY Easter Egg & Secret Reference

So here's your guide to all the MCU connections in Captain Marvel - from Nick Fury himself to examples of Kree science and technology, from Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. to the Quadjet.

Nick Fury

Nick Fury sitting across from Carol in Captain Marvel

Captain Marvel is essentially a back door origin story for Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury, revealing just how the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent began his meteoric rise through the ranks of S.H.I.E.L.D.. One scene sees Captain Marvel interrogate Fury in order to prove he's not a Skrull; he reveals that he was born in Huntsville, Alabama, and that he joined the military as soon as he left high school. Fury left the military as a colonel, and became a spy during the Cold War; he references a number of key missions, including one in Budapest. This backstory dovetails pretty well with the Phase 1 tie-in comic Nick Fury: Spies Like Us, which was set before the end of the Cold War and actually featured Nick Fury on a spy mission to Budapest.

According to Captain Marvel, Fury had a slow start at S.H.I.E.L.D., and he was only a Level 3 agent by 1995. His encounter with Carol Danvers re-energizes him, giving him a personal mission that sees him rise to the position of S.H.I.E.L.D. director by 2008.

Nick Fury's Eye Patch

Captain Marvel Nick Fury Samuel L Jackson Two Eyes

In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Nick Fury told Steve Rogers that "the last time I trusted someone, I lost an eye." Fans had expected Captain Marvel to play this straight, perhaps revealing that a Skrull impostor had slashed Fury's eye in the moments before he killed it. In reality, Fury lost his eye because of a Flerken scratch, which appears to be toxic. That subtly reinterprets The Winter Soldier, suggesting that Fury is quietly messing with Steve Rogers before deciding to take Captain America's objections seriously and reveal Project Insight to him.

RELATED: Captain Marvel Risks Creating A Winter Soldier Plot Hole

Agent Coulson

Agents of Shield Phil Coulson

Clark Gregg reprises the role of Phil Coulson, a key figure in Phase 1 who's gone on to become the star of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. According to the TV series, Coulson was born in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and he studied history in college, focusing on the importance of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Recruited into the organization, he trained at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Communication School, and was assigned to work under supervising officer Nicholas Joseph Fury. This fits perfectly with Captain Marvel, where Coulson is fresh out of S.H.I.E.L.D. training and has just been assigned to Fury.

Maria Hill

It's easy to miss, but one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who swarms Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. looking for Nick Fury and Carol Danvers is Cobie Smulders' Maria Hill. She'd go on to become one of Fury's most trusted agents, serving as his deputy director by the time of The Avengers and continuing to work with him even after the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Like Samuel L. Jackson, Smulders will reprise her role in this year's Spider-Man: Far From Home.

Nick Fury's Pager

Captain Marvel pager

Carol Danvers confiscates Nick Fury's pager and adapts it so he can summon her in an emergency situation. This is the same modified pager Fury uses in the post-credits scene of Avengers: Infinity War. The post-credits scenes reveal what happened next, as well; it seems that in the aftermath of the Battle of Wakanda, the Avengers regrouped at Avengers Compound to watch in horror as the death toll mounted. They detected an unusual signal, and traced it to the pager; somehow they knew it was connected to Fury, and decided to rig it to keep transmitting, figuring he had to be calling for help.

It's unclear how the Avengers connected the pager to Fury; it may be that they checked CCTV footage and realized Nick Fury had been there. Alternatively, it's possible that Black Widow - who herself had been a high-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. operative - had seen Fury considering using that pager before. Interestingly, in a recent interview Kevin Feige suggested that Fury may well have used that pager before now. "How do we know he never pushed it before," he asked. "We’ve never seen him push it before. That doesn’t mean he never did."

RELATED: How Captain Marvel Connects To Avengers: Endgame

The Avengers Initiative

Iron Man, Hulk, Cap, Thor, and Black Widow corner Loki with Hawkeye pointing his arrow in The Avengers

Captain Marvel reveals that Carol Danvers was the inspiration for the Avengers Initiative. Fury believed that S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't enough to protect the world from cosmic threats, and that the Earth needed another line of defense. He initially called it the Protector Initiative, but noted that Carol Danvers' callsign was "Avenger" and decided that was a better name. It's a brilliant scene, and plays with the Avengers theme swelling in the background.

Level Three

The Avengers introduced a new term into the MCU; Level Seven. In the aftermath of Loki's attack, Director Fury called Coulson back to base and told him this was a "Level Seven" event. "As of right now," he added, "We are at war." The term was undefined by the film, but Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. explained it away by revealing that S.H.I.E.L.D. had a number of levels of seniority and clearance. The series opened with a resurrected Coulson stepping out of the shadows and telling a shocked Grant Ward, "Welcome to Level Seven."

Captain Marvel confirms this interpretation of the "Level Seven" reference, albeit in a very subtle way. When Nick Fury shows his S.H.I.E.L.D. ID, it identifies him as a Level Three agent. That confirms that, while he's been at S.H.I.E.L.D. six years by the time of Captain Marvel, Fury is still pretty low down in the S.H.I.E.L.D. hierarchy.

Page 2 of 4: Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. and the Tesseract

Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S.

Nick Fury and Carol Danvers trace Dr. Lawson to Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S., a joint USAF-NASA initiative in the Mojave Desert. Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. was first teased in Iron Man 2, which subtly revealed that Howard Stark used to work with them before his death in 1991. Captain Marvel implies that Howard was probably experimenting on the Tesseract while he was working with P.E.G.A.S.U.S..

Fury returned the Tesseract to Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. after Goose coughed it up, although he increased S.H.I.E.L.D.'s presence at the facility; it ultimately became a joint S.H.I.E.L.D./NASA initiative. Fury recruited Erik Selvig into the Tesseract Project in the post-credits scene of Thor, unwittingly revealing the Tesseract's location to Loki, and the Trickster God launched his invasion of Earth by creating a wormhole into Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. at the beginning of The Avengers.

RELATED: The Tesseract Has Appeared In More Marvel Movies Than Captain America

The Tesseract

Discovered by the Red Skull in Captain America: The First Avenger, the Tesseract was lost in the Atlantic Ocean at the end of the movie. It was retrieved by Howard Stark, who - according to Iron Man 2 - at one time worked for Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S.. Presumably, the Kree scientist Mar-Vell managed to trace the Tesseract's energy to Earth, and she infiltrated P.E.G.A.S.U.S. in order to develop faster-than-light tech and allow the Skrulls to escape. She even managed to steal the Tesseract away to her own vessel, and no doubt P.E.G.A.S.U.S. was horrified to realize the Tesseract had gone missing after Mar-Vell died in 1989.

The Quadjet

Quinjet in Captain Marvel

When Nick Fury and Carol Danvers break out of Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S., they steal a ship that may be rather familiar to viewers. It's the Quadjet, forerunner of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Quinjet. "It was important that people instantly know what this ship is when it's on the hangar floor," Production Designer Andy Nicholson explained in The Art of Captain Marvel. "They need to realize that it's an earlier version of the Quinjet, so you had to be careful with keeping things like the twin engines at the back and the twin fins and the basic silhouette in the cockpit arranged in the way that you access it from the back." All American test planes have a white-and-red colorscheme, so it's likely that the Quadjet was still being tested by Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. back in 1995.

The Quadjet has been carefully thought through from a design point of view, with heat-absorbent tiles on the underside that are lifted from the space shuttle. That's why the Skrulls only have to make minor modifications in order to allow the Quadjet to fly into space. In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 3 Fitz was able to modify a S.H.I.E.L.D. Quinjet in the same way.

Page 3 of 4: The Skrulls, Ronan the Accuser and the Starforce

Talos the Skrull in Captain Marvel

The Skrulls

Captain Marvel is the big-screen debut of the Skrulls, but in truth they've been an established - albeit well-hidden - part of the MCU since 2014. In Guardians of the Galaxy, Rocket used a pair of high-tech binoculars to peer at the residents of Xandar, and briefly focused on Stan Lee. It's easy to miss, but text flashed up at the side written in what comic book readers would recognize as the Skrull language; appropriately enough, it translates as "Excelsior!" Around the same time, Marvel released an official Guardians of the Galaxy Prequel Infinite Comic on ComiXology. In one scene, Gamora visited the planet Conjunction, a barren world that's home to a notorious black market for contraband tech. As she walked through the market, one of the merchants called out, "Skrull detectors! Like new! Ten units apiece! That's value for you!" This detail fits well with the Captain Marvel tie-in novel Rise of the Starforce, which revealed that the Kree do indeed have Skrull detectors - but they're not particularly efficient, and can be jammed.

Ronan the Accuser

Lee Pace reprises the role of Ronan the Accuser, who at the time of Captain Marvel is still aligned with the Kree military. He's wearing a subtly different costume, one that matches the colors of the Kree Starforce. "At this time, he isn't a fanatic with his religion yet," Senior Visual Development Artist Anthony Francisco explained in The Art of Captain Marvel. "I tried to make him feel like he's an officer in their military, so that's why this look feels more layered... The symbol on his chest is from the comic book - the very iconic design Jack Kirby did - so I was staying true to the source material." Ronan is destined to become increasingly fanatical, and by the events of Guardians of the Galaxy has gone rogue. He ultimately dies when he attempts to use the Power Stone to lay waste to the planet Xandar.

RELATED: Captain Marvel: The (Comic Book) Kree-Skrull War Explained

The Accusers

Guardians of the Galaxy describes Ronan as "the Accuser," and Captain Marvel reveals that the Accusers are a group of Kree military leaders who render brutal justice on worlds the Kree believe have been tainted with a Skrull presence. If the Kree detect a Skrull cell on a planet, they destroy all life on the world rather than risk a single Skrull surviving. It's a chilling approach, and it raises the horrific question of just how many civilizations Ronan has personally laid waste to by the time of Guardians of the Galaxy.

Ronan's Cosmi-Rod

Ronan With His Cosmic-Rod - Guardians Of The Galaxy

Ronan's weapon of choice in Guardians of the Galaxy was a Cosmi-Rod, a hammer-like device that he even incorporated the Power Stone into. He's using a simpler design of the Cosmi-Rod in Captain Marvel, suggesting these are the ceremonial weapons of the Accusers, with the designs denoting rank.

Ronan's Kree Capital Ship

Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser in Captain Marvel

The Accusers' capital ships are deliberately designed to resemble Ronan's vessel in Guardians of the Galaxy, although the design is a little simpler and a little more basic; either indicating that the Kree have since improved their technology, or that Ronan gained access to better ships as he rose through the ranks. The Accuser ship in Captain Marvel even holds a wave of Kree fighters, just as Ronan's vessel in Guardians of the Galaxy housed smaller vehicles.

Korath the Pursuer

One member of the Kree elite Starforce unit will be familiar to viewers; Korath the Pursuer, played by Djimon Hounsou. He's Starforce's second in command, a skilled warrior whose weapons of choice are the twin blades strapped to his back. Like Ronan, Korath is fated to grow disillusioned with the Kree, and he too will go rogue. He becomes one of Ronan's most trusted lieutenants, and heads the mission to Morag to retrieve the Power Stone in Guardians of the Galaxy.

Hyperspace Jumps

Star Lord Gamor and Drax in the Milano

Kree vessels use hyperspace technology to travel through space at incredible speeds. This involves navigating to specific jump points in order to traverse a set route through hyperspace, and the "jump point" takes the form of a honeycomb structure. This is identical to the hyperspace travel used in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and the science has never really been fleshed out; it's possible that, like hyperspace in Star Wars, travel is disrupted by gravitational masses like stars and planets, which would explain the need to take a fixed route.

Page 4 of 4: The Kree Science

Kree Architecture

The design of the Kree homeworld of Hala is absolutely stunning, and unlike anything viewers have seen in a Marvel movie before. The Kree capital is a megalopolis with two distinct layers - an upper and an inner layer - each of which serves a distinct purpose. This city-world does have a precedent of sorts in the MCU; note the strange, angular building style, which dovetails perfectly with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 2's hidden Kree city. In the comics, the Kree have essentially become a stagnant race, so caught up with their wars that their architecture and aesthetics have barely changed over the course of the last few millennia. Presumably the same is true in the MCU as well.

How The Kree Saved Carol Danvers' Life

The explosion of the energy drive left Carol's body surging with Tesseract energy, and in truth she probably wouldn't have survived without the intervention of the Kree. Yon-Rogg saved her by injecting her with a blood transfusion in order to strengthen her body and allow her to heal. S.H.I.E.L.D. would go on to use almost exactly the same method in order to resurrect Agent Coulson in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., with the secretive Project T.A.H.I.T.I. using blood from an ancient Kree corpse. The same approach was used in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 5, when Coulson and his team were stranded in a dystopian future where the last remnants of humanity were ruled by a renegade Kree house.

RELATED: How Captain Marvel Brings Agents of SHIELD Closer To The MCU Movies

Comparing Captain Marvel to the Inhumans

Yon-Rogg hadn't saved Carol Danvers' life for altruistic reasons, though; he recognized that powerful energy was coursing through her body, and decided that it would be best to turn her into a weapon to be used in the Kree's ancient war against the Skrulls and the Xandarians. Although the Kree have a deep-rooted belief in their own superiority, they're not above taking advantage of enhanced beings whenever they encounter them. This is exactly the same kind of approach the Kree have taken in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., where - millennia ago - the Kree came to Earth and experimented upon humans in order to create super-powered weapons to serve on the front lines of their wars. They created the Inhumans, but unwittingly fashioned a weapon too dangerous for them to control; the Kree attempted to commit genocide and wipe out the Inhumans, but failed.

Kree Possess The Technology To Manipulate Memories

Agents of SHIELD Who You Really Are

The Kree desired to have Carol Danvers serve as a willing soldier, not a slave. To do this, they erased her memories and claimed she was an orphaned Kree warrior from a world that had been decimated by the Skrulls. There's actually a precedent for the Kree to possess memory-altering technology in the MCU. In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 2, the episode "Who You Really Are" saw the S.H.I.E.L.D. team head to Portugal when they learned an amnesiac Lady Sif was wreaking havoc. It turned out that Sif had been sent to Earth because Asgard had detected a Kree presence on the planet, but the Kree warrior Vin-Tak struck her with a Kree Truncheon that temporarily erased her memories. By the end of the episode, Vin-Tak had agreed to use it to restore her memories as a sign of good faith - even if he did wind up with his own memories wiped.

Kree Can Communicate On A Mental Level

The Kree possess the technology to project a person's mind into an Astralscape, in which they can commune with the Supreme Intelligence. This Kree tech has been seen before in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 5; in the episode "The Force of Gravity," the rogue Kree Taryan trapped Quake inside the Astralscape in an attempt to break her will. Just like Captain Marvel, Quake broke out of the Astralscape through sheer force of will.

The Kree Inhibitor

Quake Agents of SHIELD Season 5

A device affixed to the back of Captain Marvel's neck allows the Kree to limit her powers, and even shut them down completely. The technology is clearly similar to the implants the Kree used to inhibit the powers of Inhumans like Quake in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 5.

RELATED: Quake Could Be More Powerful Than Ever After Agents of SHIELD Season 5

Planetary Coordinates and Title Cards

The Guardians of the Galaxy films identified different locations in space by naming them, and adding galactic coordinates. Captain Marvel follows exactly the same pattern, giving the galactic coordinates for planets like Hala and Torfa. In Guardians of the Galaxy, the galactic coordinates were actually an Easter egg; if numbers were replaced with their associated letter (e.g. 1=A, 8=H), they spelled out words that hinted at major plot twists in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. That doesn't appear to be the case in Captain Marvel.

More: Captain Marvel Review: A Marvelous, Empowering MCU Origin Story

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