Nia DaCosta’s Captain Marvel sequence now it has formally reached the “Ok, let’s guess who the bad guy” phase of its existence, with Deadline communicating that Zawe Ashton will be playing the villain Brie Larson’s return to the role of everyone’s favorite cosmic MCU. Ashton is probably best known to the public for playing Josephina in the 2019 art horror satire Velvet Buzzsaw, along with leading roles on Netflix’s Desire to travel and British comedy series Fresh meat.
And since Marvel isn’t just going to tell us who Ashton is playing, it’s time for the most sacred of AV Club traditions: unfounded speculation, fueled by nothing more than our knowledge of comic books that are sometimes 20-40 full years. Now, given that Carol Danvers doesn’t to have all those many specific non-Kree enemies, our soft money here is playing Ashton Karla “Moonstone” Sofen, who served as the counterpart to Danvers’ evil during Marvel’s ubergritty “Dark Reign” period in the late 2000s. Although she and Carol had (relatively) few direct encounters (embarrassments most often with the first Captain Marvel and the Hulk), Moonstone is an interesting character in its own right: a dishonest psychiatrist who likes to kill people as much as to analyze his enemies. And again: there are also only really a very, very small number of “Captain Marvel villains “ running around the world of Marvel Comics, so she kind of ends up being ours Bit is assumed by default.
Or, hey, maybe Ashton is playing a Skrull. (It’s always the Skrulls!)
Captain Marvel 2 is scheduled for November 2022, with DaCosta directing from a script written by WandaVision the story editor Megan McDonnell.