How Old Is Brie Larson's Captain Marvel? It's Complicated

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is full of godlike beings who are effectively immortal, or at least age on much different timelines than regular humans. And with the timeline of the MCU being affected by events like Thanos' Blip, their ages have become even harder to pin down. One character whose age could use some clarification is Brie Larson's Carol Danvers, aka Captain Marvel, especially since we're finally getting a sequel to her debut with the upcoming release of "The Marvels."

Determining Captain Marvel's age is impeded by the wonky timeline she's followed since joining the MCU. "Captain Marvel," which debuted the same year as "Avengers: Endgame" in 2019, was set in 1995. While the movie never states her age explicitly, we know she joined the United States Air Force around her 18th birthday and was presumed to have died in action in 1989. It's safe to say she was in her early 20s by that point, which puts her in her late 20s by the time her debut movie takes place. After that, she jets around the galaxy, reemerging decades later to aid the Avengers in the Battle of Earth against Thanos during "Avengers: Endgame." 

Thanks to the five-year gap in the MCU timeline caused by the Mad Titan's snap in "Avengers: Infinity War," the Battle of Earth takes place in 2023, which should mean she's in her mid-to-late 50s. It's been a couple of years since "Endgame" on the MCU timeline, with "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" taking place in 2025. Sure enough, a post on X (formerly Twitter) from Marvel India in September noted that Carol is "60+" years old.

Some MCU fans have posited that Carol Danvers is 28 during the events of "Captain Marvel," which would make Marvel India's assertion that she's now over 60 hard to account for. However, that movie never states her actual age, so it's possible she is 30 years old during its events in 1995. Time is a malleable thing, and even more so when you've spent a number of years fighting as a Kree warrior. There's no way of knowing whether Captain Marvel was exposed to any kind of time contraction prior to arriving back on Earth.

Moreover, Carol disappears from Earth after "Captain Marvel," and again after "Avengers: Endgame," giving her more opportunities to age beyond the time that transpires on Earth. We last saw her pop up in a post-credits scene during the final episode of "Ms. Marvel," which segues into the events of the upcoming "The Marvels." Clearly, she's not happy to have been pulled back to Earth from wherever she was in the galaxy. 

But the most likely explanation for the claim that she's over 60 is simply that some fans incorrectly assumed her to be 28 in "Captain Marvel." It's possible we'll finally see some in-universe clarification around Carol's age in "The Marvels" as she teams up with the young hero Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris).