As Carol Danvers asserts to her battle instructor (Jude Law) in the latest trailer for Captain Marvel, “I don’t remember my past.” But clearly, even this amnesiac alien is holding onto some baggage. It’s kind of the M.O. for any hero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to be haunted by their younger days, or, in the case of Steve Rogers, by the ones they never got to experience. But while Carol Danvers may be joining the likes of a PTSD-inflicted Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, or Natasha Romanoff, she’s handling her own personal weights with a little more pluck… save for the occasional exploding fireball to spring from her clenched fist.

But hey, who among us doesn’t get so angry that a blitzkrieg of electricity springs from our knuckles? Especially these days. Still, this latest look at Carol Danvers’ origin story makes it feel as upbeat as we might hope, gleefully playing off the vibe and aesthetic of the sorts of feel-good action-thrillers that defined popular cinema in the 1990s, when the film is set.

And Carol’s isn’t the only origin story we’ll see in Captain Marvel. A quick quip from one Nick Fury, played by a remarkably de-aged Samuel L. Jackson (a marathon utilization of the technology we saw used to youngify Robert Downey Jr. in an early scene in Captain America: Civil War) reminds us that the film will also be a de facto origin story of the Avengers Initiative itself. Who knows what other early recruits we’ll meet along the way?

Image: Marvel/Disney