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Who Is Jude Law Really Playing in CAPTAIN MARVEL?

The first Captain Marvel trailer and poster dropped on Tuesday and they delivered everything we could have ever asked for: alien cat butts, Carol Danvers in some seriously badass armor, and straight-up grandma punchin‘ (but not for the usual millennial versus baby boomer reasons you’d expect). However, it didn’t answer one of our most burning questions about the highly anticipated Phase IV Marvel movie–who is Jude Law playing?

Many fans believe that the Young Pope himself is playing Mar-Vell, the original Captain Marvel before Carol Danvers, but we think they’re wrong. Wronger than Star-Lord about Footloose being the greatest movie of all time. Join Jessica Chobot as we try to sleuth out which infamous Marvel character Jude Law is actually playing on a new Nerdist News Edition.

Earlier this month, Entertainment Weekly provided our first official look at Jude Law in Captain Marvel, and it left us with even more questions that we started with. We know that Law is playing “the commander of Starforce,” an elite Kree military team of which Carol Danvers is a member, and he “views Carol as a mentee and pet project.” Many have homed in on that mentor relationship as further evidence that Law is playing Mar-Vell, but we think this is a red herring. If you look back at comic book history, there’s another prominent Kree military figure who factors heavily into some of the most pivotal moments in Carol and Mar-Vell’s lives: Yon-Rogg.

Image: Marvel Comics

In the comics, Yon-Rogg was a military officer stationed aboard a Kree spaceship sent to Earth by the Supreme Intelligence, the hyper-advanced A.I. that rules over the Kree. Yon-Rogg fought alongside Mar-Vell, but not-so-secretly hated him because they both pined after the same woman, a Kree medic named Una. Over the years, Yon-Rogg tried to throw Mar-Vell under the bus countless times and even conspired with Ronan the Accuser (who we saw on the big screen in Guardians of the Galaxy) to murder him. Yon-Rogg also worked with Ronan the Accuser to overthrow the Supreme Intelligence, a storyline which we could almost definitely see echoes of on the big screen based on the steely gazes these two are giving off in this photo from EW‘s Captain Marvel spread.

In case you weren’t already convinced that Yon-Rogg was a grade-A jerk, he was also consistently the worst to Carol Danvers. He kidnapped Carol at one point to use as leverage against Mar-Vell, and the resultant struggle between the two hyphenated men led to Carol getting irradiated by a device known as the Psyche-Magnitron. The accident fundamentally altered the structure of her DNA, making her half-human and half-Kree, and granting her incredible superhuman powers.

Image: Marvel Comics

Now this might seem strange given that we’ll see Yon-Rogg and Carol Danvers fighting alongside one another as part of Starforce in the film, but the trailer offers up a pretty compelling clue. If you listen closely, Carol mentions that she doesn’t seem to remember her life on Earth. She doesn’t seem to have much of a memory at all, really. During Kelly Sue DeConnick’s 2013 Captain Marvel run, it was revealed that the Psyche-Magnitron explosion created a mental link between Carol and Yon-Rogg, and culminated in a climactic showdown between the two that caused Carol to lose all of her memories. That isn’t to say we’ll see this exact plot point play out on the big screen, but it could be recontextualized for the character’s solo movie debut.

So which version of Yon-Rogg will we see in the movie? We know that Captain Marvel won’t be a traditional origin story; Carol will already have her powers and is fighting as part of the Kree’s military arm. Perhaps Yon-Rogg could start as a mentor then grow jealous of Carol like he did with Mar-Vell in the comics. Maybe this is a version where Carol has already been low-key brainwashed or mind-wiped and is being used as a pawn by someone she thinks is her mentor. Or it could be the case that Ronan and Yon-Rogg are fed up with how the war against the shapeshifting Skrulls is going and they’re planning on using Carol Danvers as a tool to take out all of their enemies in one fell swoop.

Image: Marvel Studios

We won’t know for certain until March 8, 2019, but in the meantime, the case for Jude Law as Yon-Rogg is only getting stronger. But what do you think? Who is Jude Law really playing in Captain Marvel? Let us know in the comments below!

Additional reporting by Jesse B. Gill.

Featured Image: Marvel Studios

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