MCU Theory: Captain Marvel Is The MCU's First Mutant

Captain Marvel could be retconned as the MCU's first mutant. When Marvel launched the MCU back in 2008, they had to make do without some of their biggest franchises, because they'd previously sold the film rights to other studios. In truth, the MCU would have been a lot worse had Marvel owned the X-Men; Marvel would have naturally opted to build their shared universe using A-list characters, rather than taking risks with franchises nobody really expected to be a box office hit.

Marvel regained the rights to the X-Men in the wake of Disney's Fox acquisition, and it's now only a matter of time before mutants appear in the MCU. Naturally, there's intense speculation over just how Marvel will do this. Will Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness see the MCU collide with a universe in which mutants exist? Will some sort of cosmic event trigger latent X-genes across the planet? Or will they be retconned as always existing in the MCU all along, either few in number or concealed by Professor X's telepathy?

Speaking at San Diego Comic-Con 2019, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige hinted Marvel's already decided how to incorporate mutants. That means every detail is being pored over carefully. Surprisingly, recent Marvel publications appear to have dropped some important clues - and they have major implications for Brie Larson's Captain Marvel.

Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver Could Be Latent Mutants In The MCU

Most longer-term comic book readers will be familiar with Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch as mutants, but Marvel had to take a different approach when they introduced the super-powered twins in Avengers: Age of Ultron. The rights to Pietro and Wanda Maximoff were shared between Marvel and Fox, but Marvel didn't have the right to call them mutants. Consequently, they introduced them as "miracles," beings who were granted their abilities after being subjected to Hydra experiments with the Mind Stone. The Marvel Studios Visual Dictionary, published back in 2018, prepared the way for a retcon. "Whether it altered [Scarlet Witch] or merely unlocked something latent inside Wanda," the Visual Dictionary noted, "the Infinity Stone on Loki's scepter bestowed incredible powers of the mind." For many readers, the implication was that Scarlet Witch was a latent mutant whose X-gene was activated by the Mind Stone, rather than an ordinary person who was granted powers because of it.

This theory has been supported by another in-universe reference book, The Wakanda Files, which is supposedly a collection of records compiled by Shuri. The book reveals there were several reasons Hydra decided to conduct those experiments in Sokovia, and the most intriguing is that they observed a number of genetic anomalies among Sokovians, which they believed would make them perfect test-subjects for the Mind Stone experiments. The Wakanda Files further suggests both twins have a transformed biology, just as you would expect with mutants. While all this is far from conclusion, it certainly suggests Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch may have been mutants in the MCU all along.

But How Did Hydra Know About This Genetic Marker?

Avengers Age of Ultron Baron von Strucker

Assuming Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are indeed being retconned as latent mutants, it's important not to overstate the extent of Hydra's knowledge. They had presumably identified an area in which there were a lot of people with latent X-genes, the genes traditionally associated with mutants in the comics; but they only succeeded in unlocking the powers of two. Avengers: Age of Ultron doesn't explicitly state how many other test subjects were experimented upon, but tie-in comics suggest hundreds of Sokovians died because of the Mind Stone's baleful influence.

And yet, the disturbing truth is that Hydra knew what they were dealing with far better than SHIELD. Back in Captain America: The First Avenger, Hydra agents under the command of the Red Skull successfully acquired the Tesseract. According to the Marvel Studios Visual Dictionary, they also found "an earthly version of the Book of Yggdrasil," which tells the story of the Nine Realms and the history of Odin's family. The Asgardian version actually appears in Thor: The Dark World, where Odin uses it to give his son Thor a primer on the Infinity Stones. This is presumably how Red Skull knew so much about the Soul Stone, and it would also mean Hydra would have a good idea Loki's Scepter contained another Infinity Stone. Indeed, The Wakanda Files contains some Hydra records that support that assumption.

But how did Hydra come up with the idea of using an Infinity Stone on a human being? This is actually quite a leap, especially when you remember Hydra previously used the Tesseract only to create powerful weapons, an approach SHIELD attempted to duplicate decades later. Somehow, Hydra had realized an Infinity Stone could be used to empower a human, and they had even managed to identify what they believed to be a gene key to the process. How did they come up with all this?

Captain Marvel Explains Hydra's Knowledge

The only possible conclusion is that Hydra knew of another occasion when a human being had been granted vast power by an Infinity Stone, and that they had studied their genes in order to attempt to understand why the transformation was possible. To date, the only known human being who ticks that box is Carol Danvers, aka Captain Marvel. She was granted phenomenal power when she was exposed to a surge of Tesseract energy, and the Kree believed she absorbed that energy into herself. But here is the strange thing; in spite of decades operating at peak power, Carol Danvers doesn't appear to have used up her energy at all. There's no way Carol absorbed an unlimited amount of energy - so something else appears to be going on. The most logical conclusion is that, as with Scarlet Witch, the Tesseract energy did not grant Captain Marvel her powers; rather, it unlocked something latent within her.

This would potentially explain how Hydra identified specific genes they believed could be activated through exposure to an Infinity Stone. They had access to SHIELD's files, including Nick Fury's reports, and so are highly likely to have known about Carol Danvers. It's possible they managed to obtain a genetic sample somehow, perhaps from a trace of blood shed during her mad pursuit of the Skrulls through Los Angeles. They studied this sample, identifying a key genetic anomaly they believed had been triggered by the Tesseract. Over the years, they would have naturally examined genetic samples across the globe, looking for similar anomalies. And when they finally acquired another Infinity Stone, they decided the time was right to put their theories to the test.

The Marvel Studios Visual Dictionary and The Wakanda Files both suggest Scarlet Witch's powers are genetic in nature, and that she is actually a latent mutant. But this logically raises the intriguing possibility that, in the MCU, Captain Marvel is actually a mutant as well. While there's no comic book basis for this idea, it's worth remembering Carol Danvers has actually been strongly associated with the X-Men over the years, and in fact, back in the '80s, she practically became part of the team. It would actually be quite appropriate for Marvel to subtly retcon Captain Marvel as their first mutant.

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