We Finally Know What Happened To Captain Marvel's Maria Rambeau

Contains spoilers for WandaVision

Although it's been nearly two years since Avengers: Endgame brought back half the Marvel Cinematic Universe's population, we have yet to see much of the fallout from the complete whiplash of billions of people dying and then coming back to life five years later. The only post-Blip action so far has been Spider-Man: Far From Home, which picks up months later with everyone trying to get back to normal. That is, until now. WandaVision shows just how chaotic and disorienting the return was for those who disappeared and those who remained by placing the focus on one family: the Rambeaus.

We last saw Air Force pilot Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch) back in the '90s, having dinner with her young daughter Monica, her best friend Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), and the Skrulls before an emotional goodbye to Carol at the end of Captain Marvel. There hasn't been word of her until WandaVision episode 4, "We Interrupt This Program." The episode brings us into that terrifying moment when everyone returns from the Snap: Maria's daughter — now grown up and named "Captain" Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) — comes back to Earth in a crowded hospital, her body knitting itself together in a reverse-dusting. She immediately tries to find her mother, completely oblivious to the fact that she's been gone for five years. She soon learns what happened in her absence.

At this point, every single character in the MCU, no matter how minor, is defined by the Blip: Did they disappear? Or did their loved ones? WandaVision brings that into focus with Monica, who's desperately trying to understand why her mother is no longer in a hospital bed. For her, no time has passed at all, but she learns that's not the case for Maria. Three weeks later, Monica's return to the intelligence agency S.W.O.R.D. gives us a full picture of Maria's life post-Captain Marvel.

After meeting S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Nick Fury and fighting against the Kree, Maria founded S.W.O.R.D. and became its director. She was devoted to the organization, practically raising Monica there, who became an agent in her own right. However, at the time of Avengers: Infinity War, Maria was recovering from cancer in a hospital when Monica disappeared in the Snap. Maria survived it, holding out hope that the missing people would one day come back — she even came up with S.W.O.R.D. protocols for that possibility. Considering she'd already experienced the apparent death of her best friend followed by her miraculous return several years later, it's not surprising she believed it could happen again. She was right, even though she didn't live to see it.

Two years after the Snap, Maria's cancer came back and she passed away. It was three years later that Monica returned, in the hospital room where they'd last seen each other. Tragically, Maria never got to see her daughter come back to life, and Monica had to face the sudden loss of her mother. Now, Monica's returned to S.W.O.R.D. to continue doing her mother's work, though the current threat is not from space but from one of the Avengers: Wanda Maximoff.