Brie Larson Out as ‘Captain Marvel,’ New Marvel Series Confirmed

Brie Larson hasn’t turned out to be the breakout star that Marvel Studios expected, and now Kevin Feige has confirmed that his replacement for Captain Marvel is coming soon.

The Sad Tale of Brie Larson and the MCU

Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) was introduced in Captain Marvel (2019) and followed it up with a crucial supporting role in Avengers: Endgame (2019), meaning that the Academy Award-winning actress starred in two different billion-dollar movies in a single year.

In retrospect, it is clear that Marvel Studios knew that it would soon be losing longtime stars like Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, and Scarlett Johansson and was paving the road for new actors to take their place.

Larson was heavily promoted as one of the new faces of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Kevin Feige going so far as to say that Captain Marvel “will now be the most powerful character in the [MCU],” pushing the idea of her primacy in the franchise. Director Nia DaCosta would reinforce this narrative in the lead-up to The Marvels (2023), calling Carol Danvers “the most powerful being in the universe.”

While Brie Larson might be a critically respected actress and one of the more recognizable stars of her generation, that has not translated to consistent success for the MCU. Although Captain Marvel was a box office success, the post-Endgame slump of the MCU has hit her character the hardest.

The Marvels, co-starring Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau/Photon and Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel is the lowest-grossing movie in the franchise’s history; while it was intended to be a triumphant return for the character, it has instead become representative of Marvel’s struggle to return to its past glories.

After the disaster of The Marvels, there appear to be no plans in development for Captain Marvel 3/The Marvels 2, and, reportedly, a Disney+ solo series starring Monica Rambeau has been put on ice. When the fallout of a flop is so bad that it gets other people’s projects canceled, you know it’s really bad.

It is no surprise, then, that Kevin Feige is putting a long-gestating project on the front burner to replace Brie Larson.

Related: Marvel Almost Killed Off Brie Larson

“It’s Happening, It’s Coming Together. Richard Rider”

Kevin Feige is currently revamping the MCU on the fly, dealing with everything from box office bombs to the Jonathan Majors scandal. As president of Marvel Studios and chief creative officer, it falls to Feige to figure out how to turn The Kang Dynasty in Avengers 5, recast Kang the Conqueror, figure out how the Mutant Era will work, and, most of all, combat superhero fatigue.

Among these many issues is the problem of what to do about Brie Larson. Clearly, the fan backlash to Captain Marvel being presented as the new center of the MCU is a big deal, even without the catastrophic financial performance of The Marvels.

On one hand, it appears that the studio is replacing the notion of Carol Danvers as MCU savior with Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), at least in the short term. If Deadpool & Wolverine is the commercial success that Disney hopes, that’s at least one problem solved.

Kevin Feige has confirmed that Larson is being replaced in her role as a mega-powerful space peacekeeper (per Comic Book). The Marvel chief revealed that a Nova TV series is set to debut the fan-favorite Marvel Comics character, which is in active development and will be released in the next several years, saying, “It’s happening, it’s coming together. Richard Rider…a show, it’s three or four years out.”

There have been persistent reports that Marvel Studios has been working on a Nova project for some time, with Feige saying as early as 2018, “We have a big board with a bunch of characters that have more immediate potential, Nova is on that board.”

Ryan Gosling is frequently rumored to portray Richard Rider, the most famous incarnation of the character. A few months ago, Marvel Studios Head of TV, Streaming, and Animation Brad Winderbaum revealed that the project (which has been alternately speculated to be a film or series) had survived Disney CEO Bob Iger’s culling of MCU projects, saying:

“It’s new territory for us, developing more shows than we produce. Nova certainly is exciting to us, we’ve got some great ideas simmering. I think there’s a lot of potential there. I love Nova, also, from the comics, especially the Richard Rider era… we’ll see what happens. Like you said, there’s only so many release slots in the schedule, but we want to make sure everything we make is as good as it could possibly be. But I will say that is a particular project we are excited about and excited about developing.”

However, that the Nova project will definitively be a Disney+ series and streaming in as early as three years, potentially making it a post-Secret Wars event, is new information. The disaster of The Marvels seems to have finally lit a fire under the Nova burner.

Related: Marvel President Kevin Feige Shares Exciting ‘Spider-Man’, ‘X-Men’ Update

Who is Nova?

Nova and the Nova Corps were created by Marvel Comics legend Marv Wolfman (also the creator of Blade) in an homage to the working-class reliability of Spider-Man and more than a touch of the Green Lantern Corps from rival DC Comics.

The Nova Corps, which made its MCU debut in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), is an intergalactic peacekeeping force that empowers its members with cosmic powers, including super-strength, invulnerability, space-flight, and energy blasts.

Richard Rider was an ordinary human who unexpectedly found himself imbued with these powers and recruited into the powerful alien paramilitary organization, eventually becoming a beloved hero across the universe.

This is almost exactly the same origin story of Carol Danvers in the MCU, except without the baggage of being pushed on fans as an Iron Man (Downey Jr.) replacement and the disaster of The Marvels.

Notably, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn has previously mentioned referenced earlier reluctance to use the character, “He was never in any… I’ve never seen Richard Rider in any draft of Guardians of the Galaxy. There were a billion versions of Guardians before I came aboard.

Yes, I guess maybe some script had Richard Rider in it but there was a lot of different versions.” It is fairly easy to theorize that Kevin Feige may have wanted to keep the character in reserve for just this kind of eventuality.

It may take a couple of years to get there, but it sounds like Marvel already has its Brie Larson replacement. The future of the MCU just could depend on him.

Do you think the MCU should move on from Captain Marvel?