Captain Marvel's Lashana Lynch shares how she reacted to portraying a variant of Maria Rambeau who became Captain Marvel in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Lynch made her MCU debut as the former Air Force pilot in the 2019 superhero movie alongside Brie Larson. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness saw an alternate Maria Rambeau help form the Illuminati alongside other new and familiar Marvel characters.
Making her first appearance in Captain Marvel, Lynch's Maria Rambeau was Carol Danver's (Larson) closest friend prior to her abduction by the Kree, with the both of them serving in the Air Force on Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S., as Carol helped raise Maria's daughter, Monica (Akira Akbar). Maria would leave service following Carol's disappearance, and when Carol returned to Earth with no memories of her former life, Maria would help her friend recover her memories. She also joined Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), and Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) in locating a hidden Kree lab in orbit above Earth and rescuing the refugee Skrulls onboard. However, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness would introduce a version of Maria who received powers instead of Carol, leading to her becoming the Captain Marvel of Earth-838, and Lynch recently recounted how she initially reacted to the new variant of Maria.
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Speaking to Empire, Lynch shared how she first reacted to the alternate version of Maria, discussing how she envisioned the new take on her character. While Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness' Captain Marvel doesn't have the same history as Earth-616's Maria, the star stated she still pulled from her main MCU history, approaching Maria as a "Super-mum" and using that aspect to inform her character. Check out Lynch's full response below.
“I embraced Maria as a ‘super-mum’, having a chance to flex in this very new but already existent way. It felt like it was meant to be for her.”
How Maria Rambeau Has Impacted The Wider MCU
While Maria's Captain Marvel was quickly killed by Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) shortly after her debut alongside the rest of the Illuminati, it hasn't been the only time that the character has been referenced since her MCU debut. In the main Earth-616 universe, Maria founded S.W.O.R.D, the Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division, dedicated to tackling any extraterrestrial and extra-dimensional threats that could jeopardize Earth, with an older Monica (Teyonah Parris) later joining as an agent. Despite founding the agency, WandaVision revealed that Maria had passed away during the Blip. However, with Monica being a central character in 2023's The Marvels, it is assumed by many that S.W.O.R.D may play a key role in the series, with a photograph of Lynch, Parris, and director Nia DaCosta sparking speculation that Maria could return in The Marvels in some form, potentially through a flashback that could explore Monica's past between Captain Marvel and WandaVision.
Maria's presence in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was one of the film's best glimpses at what a wider multiverse could entail. Rather than simply including a cameo from a prior Marvel film like the inclusion of Patrick Stewart's Charles Xavier, Maria's cameo instead took an existing MCU figure and envisioned how things could be events had progressed differently, leaving it to the audience to speculate on how the events of Captain Marvel could have gone on Earth-838. And while her story may not have been extensively explored on-screen, Lynch's response gives a glimpse at how she approached this new take on Maria and built on what Captain Marvel had established to develop Earth-838's Captain Marvel into her own character.