While The Marvels is a straightforward movie, its ending is the most talking point of the movie. In the Marvels, Dar-Benn, the main antagonist, is trying to save her planet Hala, the Cree homeworld. This is the same planet Captain Marvel was on in the first Captain Marvel movie, where she destroyed the Supreme Intelligence.
Unfortunately, destroying the Supreme Intelligence started a Kree civil war and eventually caused the planet to start dying as well. Their sun was dying, the planet had lost most of its atmosphere and natural resources, and the people of Halla were on the verge of dying themselves.
To remedy this, Dar-Benn finds one of the Quantum Bands. This is the other matching Bengal to the single Quantum Band Miss Marvel choirs in her Disney Plus show.
A single quantum band gives Ms Marvel her powers and allows Dar-Benn to manipulate the wormhole jump points that the MCU has been using for space travel. This manipulation causes a glitch throughout the Jump point network, which Nick Fury notices on the Saber Space station that orbits Earth.
When Monica, Rambo, and Captain Marvel simultaneously interact with different jump points, all while Kamala Khan touches her own quantum band as it begins to glow, it causes all three of their light-based powers to entangle. For most of the film, if two of them use their powers at the same time, they will swap places no matter where they are.
The Marvels Ending
The Marvels ends with a three-way battle against Dar-Benn. She ends up getting Kamala’s Quantum band, giving Dar-Benn both Bengals and the power she needs to drain the Earth’s Sun, which would restart the Sun of Halla.
However, Monica points out that Carol’s powers should be enough to kickstart Halla’s Sun on their own. But Durbin has hated Carol for some time, and she ignores Monica’s points and tries to use both quantum bands to drain the Earth’s sun anyway.
The resulting explosion of power causes Dar-Benn to die instantly and knocks Carol out for a very short time. It also rips a hole in space-time, essentially starting an incursion. The same conclusions and referenced in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and that will play a key role in Avengers, Secret Wars, and possibly Deadpool 3 and other films leading up to the end of the multiverse saga.
To stop the incursion, Captain Marvel and Ms Marvel used their powers to superpower up Monica Rambo, who can manipulate light. This effect causes her to look very similar to how she appears in the comics as Photon.
As a side note, Kamala is trying to give Monica her superhero name throughout the movie and mentions both Photon and Spectrum, two names that she’s known by in the comics, as well as Pulsar and eventually Captain Marvel.
Anyway, Monica needs to fly to the other side of the incursion in order to close it, for reasons. Monica succeeds but ends up trapped in the alternate universe. Carol, Kamala, and Nick Fury all assume that she’s gone for good, and Carol flies over to Hala to kickstart their son again.
Now, Kickstarting a dying star with raw energy would probably do more harm to the nearby planet than good, and there’s a lot of science that doesn’t add up here. But it’s a Marvel movie, so we’ll let it slide.
The Marvels Ending Explained
But speaking of the incursions, let’s talk about arguably the most important event of this movie, which is, of course, our newest sighting of a multiversal Incursion in the MCU 616 reality. As first teased by John Krasinski’s Mr. Fantastic in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. This is a direct consequence of Sylvie sending the multiverse into chaos by choosing to murder He Who Remains at the very end of the first season of Loki.
We got our first appetizer for what a post-He Who Remains multiverse looked like in Spider-Man No Way Home when the entire 616 reality almost came crashing down due to He Who Remains’ multiversal management going completely out the window, allowing for any and all multiversal possibilities across time and space to happen.
If you don’t already know, multiversal incursions are kind of a big deal in the MCU and Marvel Comics because they spell the beginning of the end of the entire Marvel multiverse.
What Mr. Fantastic warns Doctor Strange about in Multiverse of Madness begins to happen in the movie as Dar-Benn’s power causes the multiversal boundaries of the MCU 616 reality to crumble. It allows for a neighboring universe to begin to chaotically collide with its own.
When those tears first begin to form in the movie, I noticed that the gravitational disturbance that the portal causes is very reminiscent of the nearly destroyed variant of Earth that Doctor Strange and Christine Palmer get sent to by Wanda in Doctor Strange 2. The natural gravitational laws universe were completely wrecked after suffering the consequences of their own multiversal incursion courtesy of the three-eyed Sinister Strange.
I have a feeling the purple power that Dar-Benn’s bangle emitted to cause the incursion in The Marvels is the same type of dark purple cosmic power that Sinister Strange used to destabilize his own reality.
The Supreme Intelligences
The Marvels also features the brief return of the Kree’s Supreme Intelligences. But this time in its true form, a form that is extremely comics accurate. Instead of seeing the Supreme Intelligence manifested in the realm of Carol’s mind as the person her brain admired the most, we see the Supreme Intelligence’s true form.
It was a big-ass green head with tentacles coming out of it. Like the Marvel world first saw in the pages of Fantastic Four 65.
Much like in the comics, The Supreme Intelligence is, of course, the combined collective consciousnesses of all the loyal and high-value Kree that have lived and died on the planet. Because of this, Yon-Rogg refers to The Supreme Intelligence as “The Collective” when he tells Carol and the Kree Starforce to possibly “prepare to join the Collective” should they all die during their mission to the Vibranium-rich planet of Torfa in Captain Marvel.
So Supreme Intelligence should definitely be added to the list of MCU Afterlives, in my opinion. However, the most interesting thing to me about the MCU Supreme Intelligence is just how much they follow the same Celestial science established in the Eternals.
In that movie, we learn that Celestials are born from the combined Mind Energy consciousnesses of millions of dead people that have been absorbed by Arishem’s Celestial Seed in the core of the planet.
In the same vein, it seems that The Kree have managed to master the science of collecting Mind Energy and have made their own artificial Celestial being using technology. With the Supreme Intelligences even possessing four eyes as Tiamut does.
However, Carol would end up completely annihilating all those mind energies that comprised the Supreme Intelligence in a massive blast of energy, giving her the nickname “The Annihilator” amongst the Kree and creating a chaotic power vacuum.
The Main Villain Dar-Benn
But while we’re on the subject of the Kree power vacuum, now let’s talk about the film’s main villain, Zawe Ashton’s Dar-Benn. When she was first announced as the main bad guy of The Marvels, people were understandably confused as the character of Dar-Benn in the comics has only appeared in 1991’s Silver Surfer 53 and 1992’s Avengers 346.
In the comics, Dar-Benn was a Kree war general who usurped the Kree throne with his war general homie Ael-Den, ending the reign of the stupid ass Kree leader named Clumsy Foulup. After Dar-Benn and his Dar-Friend killed Clumsy Foulup, they became co-emperors of the entire Kree Empire before they themselves were killed by Deathbird of the Shi’ar Empire.
Differing from her comic book counterpart greatly, Zawe Ashton’s Dar-Benn chooses to rule extremely independently rather than having shared rulership with another fellow warrior.
Then we get this super dope shot of Dar-Benn’s ship chilling right in front of the sun, just like the Eternals did when they woke up on the Domo at the beginning of their movie. The Cosmi-Rod/Universal Weapon that Dar-Benn uses throughout the movie glows with a purple energy very reminiscent of that of Ronan the Accuser’s Cosmi-Rod when he had the purple Power Stone attached to it as a conduit for the Power Stone’s energies.
But this time, in The Marvels, it seems that Dar Benn’s weapon appears to draw energy from outside energy sources like Carol, Monica, or Kamala or from the energy accumulated within Dar-Benn’s bangle. I have a strong feeling that these Universal Weapons are made up of Vibranium.
These weapons have historically behaved a lot like Vibranium does with their ability to absorb a crazy amount of energy and shoot out sonic blasts.
