We’ve yet to see Brie Larson make her MCU debut as Carol Danvers, Marvel’s first leading heroine, as her solo movie Captain Marvel doesn’t hit screens until next March. Once that’s out the way, though, she’s set to return immediately in May’s Avengers 4, as revealed by Avengers: Infinity War‘s post-credits scene which teased her involvement.
Despite those films releasing in that order, however, the first work Larson did in character as Carol was actually for A4. Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely revealed as much while talking with Collider in an in-depth interview. They explained that they had a tricky balancing act to achieve in featuring the character in their movie without stepping on the toes of what was happening in Captain Marvel, which itself was still in flux at the time.
McFeely explained:
“We were in the position we were in with Spider-Man and Panther where Brie was going to have to shoot her scenes, I think its ok to say, before she shot Captain Marvel so we can’t really talk about what we decided but it was clearly a conversation we had to have with Ryan and Anna who didn’t exist yet before when we started that process so you are bringing directors on and were trying to set up something that will work for our movie and not screw up their movie.”
Captain Marvel directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden were brought in to helm the film last April, so – as McFeely says – the script for Avengers 4 would have been in the works well before they signed up. It’s likely that the direction they wanted to take Larson’s character in was the reason that Carol Danvers was ultimately removed from Infinity War, too – as was the original plan – and held back for Avengers 4.
Markus has previously spoken about his and McFeely’s approach to Captain Marvel in the film, explaining that she has a very rigid moral compass as she’s “a person who’s right, and knows they’re right” and will have “a clear vision” that’ll allow her to wrangle together the surviving Avengers. The handy thing is that, even if this differs from Captain Marvel‘s interpretation of the character, her solo movie is set back in the 1990s, so it’d make sense that she’d change over time. How convenient, eh?