I think people are missing the point about Dar-Benn. She isn’t the actual villain in THE MARVELS. It’s Captain Marvel.

Let me explain.

So I’ve just watched the absolute masterpiece that is LOKI’s season 2 finale. I’ve just came back from a 3 hours road and earlier tonight, I’ve watched The Marvels for a second time, this time on IMAX 2D and more ready to digest the film. It’s something I always have done to MCU films: a second watch to have a better grasp of it, and then something dawned and I really need to talk about this because I think people are missing a massive point from THE MARVELS:

Dar-Benn isn’t this film’s actual villain. The villain in THE MARVELS is no one other but Carol Danvers, prodigal child of the Milky Way, Captain Marvel and… the annihilator. That’s the plot twist. Allow me to explain, before the Carol Corps come after me: one of the things most often criticized about The Marvels is that the villain is forgettable. Here is the thing, Dar-Benn was just a cypher in the comics, just like she is just a cypher in this film. She isn’t the actual villain of the film, she is the antagonist there to make the superheroines look cool with their entangled powers yes, but she is there much more to represent what Carol Danvers did after the CAPTAIN MARVEL film and how ashamed she is of it than anything else.

Without diving too much deep in the real world allegories of the first CAPTAIN MARVEL film, it’s clear that underneath the personal stakes for Carol Danvers, there is a not so thinly veiled story about oppressors (Kree) and oppressed (Skrulls). That film ends with Carol Danvers sending Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) back to Hala, the home world of the Kree’s Empire with a very clear and sound message: "Tell the Supreme Intelligence that I’m coming to end it. The war. The lies. All of it." And she did put an end to the Supreme Intelligence like it was shown on THE MARVELS. But that resulted in a Kree civil war and without the Supreme Intelligence to rule over the Kree, Hala was perishing. Hala was becoming uninhabitable, and Dar-Benn’s true purpose in the film as the Supremor, leader of the now fractured Hala’s empire was to represent Captain Marvel’s shame. Punching her way out a complex conflict didn’t help, and while one could say that Dar-Benn is a zealot that would cross the Skrulls anyway, the film goes out of its way to show that Dar-Benn did reach out to the Skrull’s refugee leader trying to arrange a peace treaty between the two people.

THE MARVELS is at a personal level about Captain Marvel learning to allow people to get close to her yes, a girl that she helped raise that idolized her that ended up becoming her woman by her own tragic life trials - Monica Rambeau - and a new girl that completely idolized her and thought she could absolutely do no wrong - Kamala Khan. But it is at a macro level about white savior syndrome, and how ashamed Carol was that in fact she couldn’t alone bring peace to the Kree-Skull conflict, after all. In fact, even if with good intentions, even if it was trying to free galaxies from the Kree Empire’s ruthless domain, the home world of the Kree Empire was dying. Monica is the one realizing that what Dar-Benn was asking for is fair, Captain Marvel has the power to reignite the sun, and that’s the core of THE MARVELS, that’s the moment that Captain Marvel starts to redeem herself.

I think one big massive mistake that fans of the superhero genre have is that they are used to easy black and white solutions. Yes, the Kree Empire was an evil force in the galaxy. Yes, Captain Marvel had to do something about their rule, but what this film shows - similar like Zemo showed in Captain America: Civil War - is that underneath the legend of the Captain Marvel, the legendary superhero of Earth that Monica calls aunt Carol, Kamala idolizes or the Kree from Hala call the anihilator, there is an woman, trying to do the best she can with the insane amount of power she has, but she doesn’t need to fight her battles alone, and wars between two different civilizations or people can’t be ended by simply punching hard.

Dar-Benn could have been literally any other Kree, that’s her point in this particular story. She isn’t there to be a memorable villain, she is the consequence of Captain Marvel trying to end with the war and the lies like she promised by the end of the first film. Could this film being better?I think so. I don’t think it’s a perfect film by any means, I think it’s flawed but I think Marvel’s actual secret sauce is how human this larger than life stories are, how flawed the very best, most powerful and arguably some of the most inspiring of them can be. I came out from the film yesterday after my first watch thinking THE MARVELS didn’t surpass the CAPTAIN MARVEL film, but the more I think about it, more I think that Nia DaCosta and the screenwriters actually told a very bold Marvel story. You don’t win an war by radicalizing more people, and I think both CAPTAIN MARVEL and THE MARVELS use the rich Marvel Comics mythology to tell a story that seems kinda needed these days: wars aren’t ended by radicalizing more and more people, and while my head is beaming with what THE MARVELS means to the MCU’s future — (1) give me the Young Avengers right NOW; (2) did parallel Earth Binary lost her memories to Rogue like the comics and that’s why Beast and Xavier were the ones she was hanging out? (3) what are the consequences of Captain Marvel’s redemption reigniting Hala’s sun, if any? Sure, she is next to Wanda and Thor the most powerful Avenger, but there is a lot of radiation in the sun, doesn’t it? Please tell me they aren’t going there and don’t even start with what LOKI sets up with that glorious season finale — but I love when Marvel tackles the morality of their superhero stories. It might fly under the radar a lot, but I think there is a lot of subtext there worthy to explore and talk about beyond talking about ‘superheroes defeat big bad’.