Just months after the MCU adventured into the multiverse with Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania, the first trailer for the upcoming The Marvels has dropped. The film, scheduled for a Nov. 10 release, is a sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel and will see Carol Danvers (played by WGTC favorite Brie Larson) teaming up with Wandavision’s Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) and Kamala Khan, whose superhero alias is Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani). While not much has been revealed of the plot as of yet, we know the three women’s powers somehow become entangled and when they use their abilities, they end up switching places with each other. We expect this will lead to some crazy situations (and potentially one of the best MCU fight scenes yet) as the trio investigate the cause of their body switching.
The three heroes are already entangled in each other’s lives, body switching or not. At the center of this entanglement is Captain Marvel; Rambeau is the daughter of Danvers’ best friend and Khan is a massive fan, even cosplaying as Captain Marvel on occasion. It’s fitting that the trio’s powers share some similarities as well, but just how similar are they? With the trio to soon make their MCU debut, we wanted to review their abilities and ultimately determine who is the the most powerful Marvel.
Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel
Danvers is by far the most well-known of the Marvels, but is she the strongest? We’ve had some time to get to know Captain Marvel, first in her own self-titled film and then in later films like Avengers: Endgame, and we’ve seen her come into her own as she realized the extent of her abilities. Danvers gained most of her powers from interacting with the Tesseract/Space Stone and has also gained some abilities from her time with the Kree. Her encounter with the Tesseract granted her the ability to produce powerful cosmic energy, which she usually channels into her signature photon blasts. In addition to this, she has superhuman strength, speed, and stamina, as well as the ability to fly. When she enters her binary mode by summoning the full extent of her cosmic power, she becomes virtually unstoppable. It’s hard to compete with someone who was able to almost single-handedly defeat Thanos, but let’s see how the other Marvels compare.
Captain Monica Rambeau
The daughter of Danvers’ best friend Maria, Monica Rambeau is a member of the Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division (or S.W.O.R.D.), the agency her mother founded. We first meet Rambeau as a child in Captain Marvel, which takes place in the 1990s, but the agent took a more prominent role in Wandavision. After missing the last years of her mother’s life due to the Blip, Rambeau was among those resurrected five years later and returned to her work with S.W.O.R.D. She was then sent to Westview, where she was under Wanda Maximoff’s influence with the rest of the town’s residents before eventually breaking free. Her time in Westview altered her DNA, giving her new superhuman abilities including energy absorption, spectral vision, and the ability to phase through objects. Her reaction time and stamina were improved as well, giving her the ability to track bullets in midair and easily avoid them. When she uses her different abilities, her eyes glow different colors and while that doesn’t give her an edge over the other Marvels, it is pretty cool.
Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel
Kamala Khan was an ordinary teenager with an obsessive interest in the Avengers, specifically Captain Marvel (superheroes: they’re just like us) before an old bangle that once belonged to her grandmother awakened superhuman powers within her. Her powers are similar to her idol in that they come from cosmic origin but there are differences; Khan’s primary ability is creating a purple solid cosmic light that can be used in a variety of ways. These energy constructs, dubbed “hard light” by Khan, can be used to create shields, moving platforms, and create blasts of energy she throws at enemies. Additionally, Khan uses this power to “embiggen” her limbs, effectively stretching parts of her body in a way reminiscent of Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic. It’s clear the young superhero is very powerful, but how does she rank among her fellow Marvels?
Our final ranking
All three of the Marvels are formidable, but one clearly out-powers the rest – at least from what we’ve seen so far. Danvers is the undisputed most powerful of the trio, given the godlike abilities she’s displayed in different films. While both Rambeau and Khan are obviously quite skilled, we simply haven’t had a chance to see the full extent of their powers yet as we just passed their origin story stage. The two are relatively even matched from what we’ve seen in their respective shows, but we’re gonna have to give Khan the edge over Rambeau; in Wandavision, Rambeau had just learned of her abilities and hadn’t had much time to use them, let alone master them. Khan’s powers are also fresh but she had more time to demonstrate her skills in her show. We’ll have to re-access when The Marvels premieres, but as of now our ranking is: Carol Danvers, Kamala Khan, and then Monica Rambeau.