Despite appearing to be nothing more than a cute little kitty, this merciless creature
is one of the most powerful entities in Captain Marvel, and potentially the entire MCU.
Don't believe us?
Ask Nick Fury.
Here's everything you need to know about the "cat" in Captain Marvel.
Spoilers ahead!
In the comics, the idea of Carol having a loyal pet kitty predates the occasion of her
officially taking the mantle of Captain Marvel, with the cat making its first appearance in
2006's Giant-Size Ms. Marvel #1.
But much like in the movie, in which it takes up until the third act for the other, alien
shoe to drop, the cat spent years in the comics being seen as just a cat.
It only reached its full, fearsome potential as an alien "flerken" during the space-set
2014 run of Captain Marvel.
In the comics, Carol first meets her cat in an imagined alternate dimension conjured up
by Scarlet Witch during the "House of M" storyline, but is fortunate enough to see the creature
cross back over into her reality with her when that illusion comes to an end.
In the movies, though, the cat is introduced as a companion of Annette Bening's Mar-Vell,
another alien in disguise hiding out on Earth.
Though Captain Marvel's cat has only appeared in one movie so far, it's already responsible
for one of the most consequential actions in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe scratching
out Nick Fury's eye.
Ever since he was introduced in the surprise post-credits coda to 2008's Iron Man, Samuel
L. Jackson's Nick Fury has worn a patch over his left eye, implying a fairly badass backstory.
In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Fury hinted at what happened …
“Last time I trusted someone, I lost an eye.”
Now, more than 10 years after being introduced in the movies, we finally know the origins
of Nick Fury's signature injury the flerken did it!
While "I lost my eye to an alien" is a pretty cool story to tell over drinks, it loses a
little bit of that cool factor when the alien in question looks like a typical housecat.
So Fury has been letting rumors take hold and embracing the mythmaking around his lost
eye ever since.
In the Captain Marvel movie, Carol's cat is pegged as a flerken by Talos the Skrull, who
reacts to the creature's presence with what turns out to be well-justified fear.
But in the comics, the cat's true identity was first noticed by another deceptively cute
character Rocket Raccoon of Guardians of the Galaxy fame.
When Rocket first meets Carol's cat, he immediately sets out trying to engage it in combat, hoping
to kill it before it gets the chance to kill him.
Despite Carol's protests, Rocket raves about the monster's fearsome powers, including a
carnivorous mouth full of hellish tentacles.
Though at first he sounds paranoid about the creature's true nature, he's eventually proven
right when the flerken quietly lays dozens of eggs, tipping Carol off to her fuzzy friend's
curiously alien nature.
Captain Marvel uses its '90s setting as an excuse for an in-universe prequel throwback,
centering the action on the MCU Phase One's Tesseract, a.k.a. the magical blue cube that
houses the blue Space Stone.
In the movies, this consequential cube spent time apparently being protected by the belly
of the flerken, sitting undigested in its terrifying stomach until the choice was made
to vomit it up on a desk at S.H.I.E.L.D.
headquarters at some undisclosed later time, as shown during Captain Marvel's second end-credits
scene.
As the comics make clear, the belly of the flerken isn't just unusually stretchy it's
actually its own pocket dimension, capable of containing unknown multitudes of matter,
organic or otherwise.
It's no wonder people are so scared of the thing it doesn't just swallow people whole.
It completely removes them from their own reality, sending them off to worlds unknown.
Despite being in a universe where it's been firmly established that animals and plants!
can talk, the flerken in Captain Marvel generally keeps its lips sealed, only opening its mouth
to hilariously devour entire hallways' worth of Kree soldiers, among other untold atrocities.
As a result, there's not a lot of character to this character, at least not that we get
to see.
What does the flerken want?
In both the comics and the movies, the flerken is generally used as a joke unto itself, created
for what seems like the sole purpose of setting up the punny line "No one steals my flerken
cat."
It also serves as a vehicle for cute pop culture references.
In the comic book run in which its backstory as a fearsome alien is introduced, the cat
is known as Chewie, after the well-known Star Wars character.
“Chewbacca?
Okay, well, haha.
You’re gonna need a nickname because I ain’t saying that every time.”
This makes sense, considering that story takes place while Carol is in space.
The movie augments this, connecting the cat to the Air Force base on which Carol and Mar-Vell
both work, and giving it the name of Goose in reference to the '80s classic aerial combat
movie Top Gun — most definitely a favorite film for movie ace pilot Carol...though her
trip through Blockbuster video seems to indicate she might want to give The Right Stuff a try
the next time she's back on Earth...
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