The Marvels Trailer Finally Reveals New Marvel Movie Villain

Captain Marvel! Ms. Marvel! Monica Rambeau! Nick Fury!

Like most Marvel Cinematic Universe projects, the upcoming Captain Marvel sequel The Marvels brings back familiar characters, all on display in the first trailer for the 2023 movie. However, less familiar to even hardcore comic book readers is the movie’s villain, Kree warrior Dar-Benn, played by English actor Zawe Ashton, who makes her debut in this trailer.

Watch it below:

The trailer focuses on catching up with our marvelous heroes, most of whom we haven’t seen in a while. The trailer opens with Nick Fury on a space station (apparently he’ll make it through Secret Invasion just fine), conducting experiments with Monica Rambeau, the SWORD agent we met as an adult in WandaVision. But when she uses her powers, Monica switches places with young hero Kamala Khan, repeating the spacial swapping we saw in the post-credits of Ms. Marvel. When Rambeau and Fury visit the Khan household to investigate, Kamala uses her powers, causing her to switch places with Carol Danvers.

Although the trailer is mainly interested in the banter between the immensely powerful Danvers, the scientifically-minded Rambeau, and the excitable Khan, we do get glimpses of a larger story. Part of that story involves the Kree Empire, the alien conquerers seen in Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain Marvel. Of particular note is a Kree woman played by Ashton, carrying an Accuser’s hammer, similar to Ronan the Accuser.

Even hardcore comic book fans would not recognize Ashton’s character as General Dar-Benn, and not just because she looks nothing like the male Kree from the comics. Dar-Benn appeared only in a few Silver Surfer and Avengers comics as part of a group of usurpers who became leaders of the Kree Empire, along with the similarly obscure General Ael-Dan, just long enough to get killed by Shiar troublemaker Deathbird during the opening salvo of the 19-part Marvel comic book crossover event Operation: Galactic Storm from 1992.

In the trailer, we see Dar-Benn take an Accuser’s hammer, which suggests that she will mirror her comic book counterpart’s military history. Later, we see her battling the space-hopping trio of heroes, in what may be the movie’s climax.

Tellingly, the fight seems to take place in the same area where Danvers interacted with the Kree Supreme Intelligence in Captain Marvel, which suggests that Dar-Benn may be motivated by revenge for Danvers’s attack on the Supreme Intelligence. Hopefully, that means we’ll get a more comic-accurate version of the Supreme Intelligence instead just Annette Benning.

We also get our first look at Parasite standout Park Seo-joon as a deep-cut Captain Marvel comic book character. The trailer features shots of an alien world which wouldn’t be out of place in a Bollywood movie. In these scenes, we briefly see a long-haired Park, ordering a group of soldiers. Park is rumored to play Prince Yan of the planet Aladna, another character with only a couple of comic book appearances.

In the comic book version of Aladna, everyone speaks in rhymes, which seems to be translated into colorful song and dance numbers for the movie. Also, Yan’s plot involves a misunderstood marriage proposal involving X-Men supporting character Lila Cheney and later Captain Marvel herself, which could be how the visit to this faraway planet ties together.

We’ll find out more when The Marvels comes to theaters on November 10.