Avengers: Endgame is almost upon us. We’ll finally see Captain Marvel answer Nick Fury’s call and join Earth’s mightiest heroes in doing “whatever it takes” to destroy Thanos and save everybody who was turned to dust at the end of Infinity War.
The post-credits tease with Fury’s pager, paired with another post-credits tease in Captain Marvel’s recent solo movie, seem to suggest that a lot of Endgame will revolve around Carol Danvers battling Thanos. According to the comics, there are plenty of ways Carol will be able to defeat the Mad Titan, so here are 10 Powers Captain Marvel Can Use To Defeat Thanos.
Photon blasts
When Thor launched his Stormbreaker axe at Thanos towards the end of Infinity War and badly wounded his shoulder, Thanos told him that if he’d aimed for his head, he would’ve killed him. This suggests that enough impact to the head will be enough to defeat him. As we saw from Captain Marvel’s climactic battle, as the title character opened a can of whoop-ass on Jude Law’s Yon-Rogg, her photon blasts are very powerful.
Maybe all she’ll have to do is hit Thanos in the head with a bunch of them and he’ll be eliminated. In fact, she might defeat Thanos in the first ten minutes of the movie with something simple like this, so the Russos can establish for the audience – and the other Avengers – just how powerful she is.
Flight
Remember in Star Wars: The Last Jedi when Vice Admiral Holdo flew a ship at lightspeed into the First Order’s fleet to destroy some of their ships? Well, Captain Marvel might be able to do more or less the same thing to defeat Thanos. Carol Danvers is not only able to fly; she’s able to fly at around six times the speed of sound.
If she flew at that speed directly into Thanos, she might be able to plow right through him. It would be a little gory for the MCU, but with some creative editing, the Russos could still get around the PG-13 restrictions.
The Cosmic Cube
The Cosmic Cube (a.k.a. the Tesseract) was a huge part of the plot of Captain Marvel, and that was probably for a reason. In the comics, Thanos described the Cosmic Cube as “the only object that can challenge my Infinity Gauntlet.” The great thing about these MacGuffins is that when the comics dictate that something is extremely powerful, there’s something else in the comics that’s just as powerful, if not more powerful.
The Captain Marvel character’s whole origin story was altered to involve the Cosmic Cube in her solo movie, conveniently released two months before Endgame. This suggests that the Cosmic Cube and its power the key to Captain Marvel defeating Thanos.
Time travel
The leading fan theory is that Avengers: Endgame’s plot will heavily involve time travel. Samuel L. Jackson confused fans recently when he said that Captain Marvel is “one of the few people in the Marvel universe that can time travel.” Captain Marvel has a lot of powers, but as far as the comics are concerned, time travel isn’t one of them – at least not in the traditional sense.
However, her immunity to almost all conditions (including the depths of outer space) mean that she’ll probably be able to enter the Quantum Realm with Ant-Man (and the rest of the Avengers, with their neat new suits) and time-travel that way. Jackson has since retracted his comments, but that could be a ruse.
Military strategy
Okay, this isn’t necessarily a superpower, but it is one of Carol Danvers’ abilities. It’s highly likely that Captain Marvel won’t be powerful enough to defeat Thanos on her own. As a character, she’s stronger than him, but with the Infinity Gauntlet and a complete collection of Infinity Stones, Thanos has the ability to control the fabric of reality, the fate of humanity, and the space-time continuum with the snap of his fingers.
So, Captain Marvel alone might not be able to defeat him. It will involve teamwork by all the Avengers, led by impeccable military strategy. We could see our two captains – Marvel and America – team up on the plan, drawing on their shared military experience.
Taking the form of Binary
In the comics, Carol Danvers can take on a form known as Binary. This allows her to access white holes and siphon the incredible amounts of power from them. White holes are essentially the opposite of black holes. A white hole is the exit point where a singularity is able to dip out of this universe.
Every Infinity Stone (including the mysterious missing one, the Ego Stone, which a lot of fans have been speculating about) comes from a gravitational singularity. Carol’s access to white holes give her as much power as the Infinity Stones, yet also the polar opposite of that power, making it a strong candidate – at least in terms of story and drama – for her journey to defeat Thanos.
Seventh sense
If you caught Jordan Peele’s Us in the past couple of weeks, you’ll remember (SPOILER ALERT!) the climactic ballet sequence in which Adelaide tries to kill Red and Red deftly avoids every swing Adelaide takes at her, because they’re “tethered” to one another and she can see every move coming.
Captain Marvel will be able to do more or less the same thing with Thanos. She has a “seventh sense,” which allows her to see things coming before they happen. That will allow her to remain one step ahead of the Mad Titan in any potential hand-to-hand combat the two engage in.
The M’Kraan Crystal
Thanos managed to conquer the universe using a powerful MacGuffin, the Infinity Gauntlet. But maybe Captain Marvel can fight him with her own powerful MacGuffin, the M’Kraan Crystal. The M’Kraan Crystal holds a massive amount of energy (energy that Carol can absorb and project) and is also the key to unlocking alternate universes.
This is what makes the M’Kraan Crystal more powerful than the Gauntlet – there’s a Gauntlet in every alternate universe, whereas there’s only one M’Kraan Crystal and it can be used to get to all those others. We haven’t yet seen the M’Kraan Crystal in the MCU, but then we also haven’t seen Captain Marvel for the past twenty or so years of story and she’s been in outer space the whole time, so she could’ve picked it up along the way.
Energy absorption
In Captain Marvel, we saw that one of Carol’s greatest powers is energy absorption. She has the ability to absorb energy from any source and use it against her enemies. In Infinity War, no Avenger was able to remove the Infinity Gauntlet from Thanos’ hand, despite their best efforts, but maybe with Carol Danvers on their side, they won’t have to.
She might be able to absorb all the energy from the Infinity Stones without actually having to remove the Gauntlet and wear it, making her just as powerful – and with the same powers – as Thanos. The hero and villain of this movie would finally be on a level playing field.
Strength
One of Carol Danvers’ main powers is simply superhuman strength. But that’s vague. A ton of people have superhuman strength, and the degree of that strength varies. Captain America has superhuman strength and Thanos has superhuman strength and the former couldn’t beat the latter with his strength. Superhuman strength is a wide spectrum in the MCU.
Captain Marvel could only defeat Thanos with her strength if she was stronger than him. But thankfully, it seems like she is, at least in the MCU. This was confirmed when producer Kevin Feige said, “She is as powerful a character as we’ve ever put in a movie. Her powers are off the charts, and when she’s introduced, she will be by far the strongest character we’ve ever had.” We’ve “had” Thanos before, so Feige is saying, in not so many words, that Captain Marvel is stronger than Thanos.