WARNING: The following contains spoilers for What If…? Season 1, Episode 7, “What If… Thor Were An Only Child?,” streaming now on Disney+.
Ever since her introduction in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Carol Danvers, better known as Captain Marvel, has been portrayed as not only one of the strongest Avengers, but one of the strongest cosmic characters period. This was especially driven home during Avengers: Endgame when Carol took on Thanos by herself, and was actually able to hold her own to the point that Thanos needed to use the Power Stone to take her out of the fight.
The latest lighthearted episode of What If…? only further demonstrates Captain Marvel’s power, as she gets into a one on one fight with Thor that spans across several continents. While Thor gives a good showing and initially seems to have won their confrontation, Carol later reveals that she was holding back. Unleashing her full power against Thor would have caused unnecessary fatalities, something she didn’t want to do when she was dealing with someone she saw as a frat boy.
Later, Carol fights Thor again, and while it’s unclear just how much stronger she is compared to Thor (whose only response to Carol throwing him into Siberia from orbit was “I actually felt that one”), it’s clear that, at that point, she had no plans to hold back any further. To make matters even more impressive, at the same time, SHIELD is also planning to nuke Thor, even with Captain Marvel in the blast zone. When Coulson brings up this fact, Acting Director Maria Hill dismissively says that Carol would be fine, indicating that a nuclear blast is something Captain Marvel could just shrug off.
We don’t see Thor or Captain Marvel going all out because the fight gets interrupted by Frigga, and as such, we aren’t privy to what would happen if Captain Marvel and Thor got hit by a nuke. The implication that Carol at least, and likely Thor as well, would come out of it completely intact, however, says a lot about just how powerful Captain Marvel is. Earlier dialogue and scenes also show Carol can dish out as good as she can take, with Hill comparing her punches to ten nuclear bombs and Carol herself concerned that she could end up cracking the Earth if she cuts loose too much.
This certainly is reminiscent of the comics, where absurdly powerful showings like that are casually tossed around by the higher end heroes like Captain Marvel. Of course, this also leads to some of the same issues that the comics had and what we’ve already seen from Carol so far, in that she’s just too powerful to use too often.
In an interconnected universe where she can be called upon by other heroes, her very existence trivializes a lot of fights, unless she was dealing with opponents tailor made for her, or was otherwise preoccupied dealing with some other threat. This is certainly plausible given Carol is shown to operate across the universe, but it also means her roles in the MCU as a whole will probably remain quick cameos, or she will otherwise be used sparingly, so as not to completely overshadow every other character.
To see the extent of Captain Marvel’s powers, new episodes of What If…? air Wednesdays on Disney+.
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