Captain Marvel is known for being a beacon of hope, which is how she is portrayed within the MCU, but one dark transformation twists that identity.
Within the MCU, Carol Danvers stands as a pillar of hope for the hopeless, not just on Earth, but across the cosmos as the seemingly unstoppable hero Captain Marvel–however, her darkest transformation completely flips her inspiring MCU identity.
Carol Danvers became the heroic Captain Marvel after her latent powers–which resulted from her Kree ancestry on her mother’s side–finally kicked in, granting her a plethora of god-tier abilities. Some of those powers include super strength, flight, photon blasts, and energy shields (which she primarily uses to fly through space). As soon as these powers manifested, Carol knew she had to use them to be a hero–a predisposition stemming from her history as a U.S. Airforce pilot, which is also a character trait that transcends time and space. Unfortunately, in one splintered timeline from the main Earth-616, Carol’s heroic spirit isn’t enough to save her from a twisted fate.
X-Men’s Age of Apocalypse Turns Captain Marvel into a Twisted Monster
In Weapon X #4 by Larry Hama and Adam Kubert, Wolverine has returned to the headquarters of the Human High Council having successfully completed a vital mission for the last remaining factions of human resistance against En Sabah Nur in this, the timeline of the Age of Apocalypse. Unfortunately, his partner, Carol Danvers, was believed to have been killed in action while fighting an ultra-powerful version of the villainous Donald Pierce during the mission. In this reality, Carol never unlocked her full potential to become a cosmically powerful superhero, and was, instead, a regular human who still decided to fight for the good of humanity despite being relatively powerless in a world ruled by the strongest and most ruthless mutants imaginable. However, in this issue, it is revealed that Carol actually survived her encounter with Pierce, and she did acquire superhuman abilities following that fight as well–just, in the worst possible way.
During their fight, Pierce infected Carol with a version of the techno-organic virus (similar to the virus Cable was infected with in the main Marvel continuity). However, this version was a bit different as it not only merged Carol with machine, but also with a number of other victims of this experimentation–resulting in Danvers becoming a mutilated amalgamation of incomprehensible agony. As this robotic, mutated creature, Carol Danvers’ actions weren’t her own, as the transformation twisted her mind as much as her body. Carol became a slave to Pierce and was forced to use her horrible new superpowers to kill the last remnants of humanity. In between shooting anyone she could, Carol would gain the slightest bit of sentience, and she used every precious second of it to ask Wolverine to just end her life.
This tragic fate for one of the most inspiring heroes in Marvel Comics is a hard thing to see, especially for fans who are used to seeing Carol Danvers as she is in the MCU–proving that Captain Marvel‘s darkest transformation flips her MCU identity in the most horrific way imaginable.
