Captain Marvel's Worst Decision Killed Thousands of People
Spoilers ahead for Captain Marvel #20!
Captain Marvel is no stranger to taking lives, as an ex-military officer who became an Avenger with a soldier's approach to cosmic battle. But one of her most seemingly harmless villains, one so sympathetic she joined sides with him, just took a turn that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
In 2019's Marvel Team-Up, in an arc written by Clint McElroy with art by Ig Guara, color by Felipe Sobreiro, and lettering by Clayton Cowles, Carol joined up with Ms. Marvel to fight a mysterious foe who was reverse-engineering Kree robots in a revenge plot against the alien race. The part-Kree hero tracked down the culprit: Dr. Walter S. Lawson, the man whose life was stolen by the original Captain Marvel when he infiltrated Earth. Walter, calling himself "Wastrel", hatched a scheme to steal Kree tech, use it to lure a Kree judicial force to Earth, and then test a machine he built to depower them.
Wastrel refused to hurt or kill anyone; his ultimate weapon was designed to take away the Kree's superpowers in the hopes that they'd stop conquering the galaxy. His cause was so reasonable that Carol defended him against the Kree; even after he tried to depower her, the cosmic Avenger recommended leniency to the Kree judge. She agreed and sentenced him to community service.
In the recent issue Captain Marvel #19, the main character investigated a disaster on a Kree world. An entire city was destroyed by a massive explosion, killing every inhabitant except one. The Kree wanted to charge the survivor with the crime, but when Carol learned the survivor was her pacifistic half-sister, she disobeyed her orders and kept investigating to find the real culprit. When Wastrel showed up at the crime scene to clean it up, Carol grew suspicious and discovered he'd escaped duty to go back to his tech-scavenging ways. In the new issue 20, she confronted him and he confessed to the crime with no hesitation: he'd killed everyone in the city because he had a grudge with the Kree.
But this represents a massive inversion of how the character thinks and acts. In his original appearance, he refused to attack anyone because he detested violence. His entire motivation was based on disarming the empire to save innocent people. But he talks about wiping out the Kree equivalent of Chicago like Carol should have known he was going to do it, like she's at fault for letting him go without killing or imprisoning him. What happened to the character that changed his personality completely? Is there something more sinister at work, or did the writer of Captain Marvel decide to reinvent a benevolent troublemaker as a world-ending monster, like DC flipping Max Lord? For that matter, how did he get access to city-destroying bomb materials working trash cleanup? How did any explosion kill every single person in a city, leaving it barren? Maybe this will turn out to be some kind of Skrull trick caused by the Empress framing him. Or maybe comics just don't make sense sometimes.
Captain Marvel #20, written by Kelly Thompson, with penciler Cory Smith, inker Adriano de Benedetto, and colorist Tamra Bonvillain, is available now.