The end of the Marvels suggests that big things are coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Here's what happened and what it all means.
In The Marvels, directed by Nia DaCosta, Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), and Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani) team up to take down Dar-Benn, a Kree revolutionary who is traveling through space to steal resources for her planet Hala. Dar-Benn previously tried to stop Captain Marvel from destroying the Supreme Intelligence but failed to do so, igniting a desire for revenge after destroying the planet’s leader rendered it almost uninhabitable for the Kree.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The movie opens with Dar-Benn on a planet where she and her team are mining for an ancient artifact. We come to learn that she found a Quantum Band, the bangle that gives Kamala Khan her powers, and only has one of them (so now we know where the other one is). Dar-Benn sets off on a mission to retrieve the second one while gathering resources like water, which is why she travels to the water planet of Aladna to bring it back home to Hala. She also wants to steal Earth’s sun because the light in theirs went out.
Monica says in the movie that she has been opening up too many wormholes and if she opened up another, it would cause a rift in the space-time continuum. The movie culminates in an epic fight scene between The Marvels (their unofficial team name) and Dar-Benn. She manages to get the second bangle off of Ms. Marvel and attempts to harness the power of both Quantum bands to open another wormhole; the power kills her and she gets disintegrated immediately. Monica says she’s opened up a wormhole to a different reality and the only way they can close it is if Ms. Marvel and Captain Marvel charge her with power and she closes it from the other side. Carol tries to save her niece but Monica closes the hole before she can reach her, putting her in a different dimension.
Kamala returns to her parents and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), who ask what happened to the remaining two Marvels. She tells them that Monica is gone and that Captain Marvel had to help the people of Hala by using her powers to reignite the sun, which we see her do.
In the last scene of the movie, we see Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) walking into her apartment and Kamala is already there sitting in the dark with a baseball cap on waiting to greet her. She proposes the idea of starting a super group together and Kate agrees.
Marvel has been slyly setting up the formation of the Young Avengers, but only people who know where to look can see where the clues lie. Speculation first started with Wanda Maximoff’s (Elizabeth Olsen) kids, Billy and Tommy—who are known in the Marvel Universe as Wiccan and Speed. Kate Bishop was initially introduced in Hawkeye (which was TIME’s pick for the best Marvel TV show on Disney+) and America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) made her debut into the MCU in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.
Others on the team in the comics have also made their way into the cinematic universe, including Ant-Man’s daughter, Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton), Iron Heart (Dominque Thorne), Hulk’s son Skaar (Will Deusner), and Kid Loki (Jack Veal).
The Marvels marked the MCU’s first real acknowledgment of the team forming and audiences can now get to see the team take shape as they band together to fight Kang The Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), who is being positioned as the Thanos-level villain.
