The Real Villain Of The Marvels Isn't Dar-Benn, It's Captain Marvel

Contains spoilers for "The Marvels"

In "The Marvels," Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), and Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) face off against Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton). A Kree warrior and the successor to "Guardians of the Galaxy" villain Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace), Dar-Benn wreaks havoc across the galaxy after acquiring one of the two Cosmic Bands, which allows her to steal natural resources like air and water from distant planets. Her goal is to restore the Kree homeworld of Hala to glory after its swift descent into chaos and despair. She blames that fall on Carol herself, whose destruction of the Kree Supreme Intelligence in "Captain Marvel" led to a civil war.

The core trio battles Dar-Benn and her forces numerous times throughout "The Marvels." And yet, it's clear that she's not the movie's real villain. She's evil, yes, and treacherous to the extreme, but she's also just the result of things that Captain Marvel herself has done. Over the course of the film, we learn that Carol sees herself as the villain of her own story. And in a way, she is.

To be clear, Carol never really had a choice. The Super Intelligence was a violent AI construct that had already caused untold harm by the time Carol destroyed it. But even the best intentions can have unforeseen, horrific consequences. Rather than face these things head-on, Carol chooses to self-isolate as punishment for what she's done. Only when she unites with Monica and Kamala is she finally able to confront herself.

Captain Marvel has always been a cool character — there's no question about that. But she's also received frustratingly little in the way of real character development. Most of her story in the first "Captain Marvel" movie is about her regaining her memories. It's hard to make a character grow when they don't even know who they are most of the time. And while she plays a pivotal role in "Avengers: Infinity War" and "Endgame," she still doesn't get much screen time to become more than a powerful warrior.

"The Marvels" makes Carol just one of three protagonists, but it still gives her the best character arc she's had in the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far, and it does so by making her the villain. The Kree call her "The Annihilator" because of what happened to Hala in her wake. And even though the context of her attack was quite complicated, she believes this narrative about herself. She accepts that she is ultimately a killer and a destroyer, fit only to wander space in solitude. This is why she avoids rekindling her relationship with Monica, and it's why she so rarely returns to Earth.

Dar-Benn is simply a reflection of this version of Captain Marvel. A flashback even shows how traumatizing Carol's assault on Hala was for Dar-Benn. And while the film never says that Carol was wrong to destroy the Supreme Intelligence, it does show that restoration is a more worthy pursuit than destruction.

There's an argument to be made that the true climax of "The Marvels" isn't when Monica closes the rift torn open by Dar-Benn, but when Carol returns to Hala to heal its sun. The notion that she could accomplish such an astronomical feat never even occurs to her before Monica suggests it at the end of the movie. In part, that's probably because Carol doesn't know the limits of her own powers. But it's also because she's never really believed that she's capable of being a force for healing.

The darkness of Hala's sky reflects the version of Carol that she has come to accept — one who truly is the villain of her own story. By reigniting the sun, showering the planet with light and hope once again, Carol also steps into the hero she never believed she could truly be. Harm has still been done, and there's more work to do, but for the first time in the long history of the Kree-Skrull War, things seem to finally be moving toward permanent peace. Captain Marvel doesn't need to defeat Dar-Benn to make that happen. She only has to defeat the Annihilator, and she succeeds.