The Real Reason Nick Fury Didn’t Page Captain Marvel Sooner

As the post-credits scene in Avengers: Infinity War and the final few minutes of her recently released solo movie have proven, Captain Marvel is like the Kim Possible of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: call her, beep her, if you want to reach her.

Major Marvel fans know the story: S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Nick Fury paged Captain Marvel at the tail end of Infinity War after Thanos snapped his Infinity Stone-powered fingers, and killed half of all life in the universe. In Captain Marvel, set many years earlier, Carol Danvers hands Fury his pager back before she leaves Earth to help the Skrulls locate a new home world, telling him she made extra-special enhancements to his trusty communications device and to only use it to contact her when there’s a, quote, “real emergency” happening.

Thanos decimating the universe is certainly a real emergency! No one denies this. But what about all the other crises that have gone down in the MCU? Did they not necessitate a call to Captain Marvel? Exactly why did Fury wait until Infinity War to page her?

We finally know the answers to all those questions. Sort of.

Movie news site SlashFilm did the world a favor when they asked Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige in a recent interview why Fury didn’t contact Captain Marvel sooner — like, say, when that gigantic wormhole barfed up a bunch of aliens over Manhattan in the original Avengers. That event was so bad that the World Security Council launched a nuclear bomb at the city. Nick Fury had to run outside and fire an actual bazooka at one of SHIELD’s own planes to try and stop it! That’s some rough stuff!

If Captain Marvel is the most powerful character in the MCU, and if she’s apparently strong enough to help take down Thanos, why hasn’t she been spoken about in connection with the Avengers until now? Why hasn’t she helped them out?

According to Feige, there are two explanations. The first one is that Fury may not have considered anything that went down before Infinity War a genuine emergency based on the scale of the chaos.

Aliens invading Manhattan? Who cares? It’s just one city, right? No big deal.

Killer robots threatening total world domination? Psh, whatever, that sounds like something Tony Stark should be able to fix with a quick call to his IT guy.

Nick Fury actor Samuel L. Jackson backed Feige on this particular explanation, chatting with IGN about why Fury hasn’t called Captain Marvel before.

Feige’s second explanation is a little…hairier. According to the interview, Feige discussed Fury’s super-pager, saying:

“How do you know he never hit it? How do we know he never pushed it before? We’ve never seen him push it before. That doesn’t mean he never did.”

Okay, maybe that’s true? We never saw him page her…but there’s a lot of things we never saw Nick Fury do. We never saw him get eaten by a shark, but it doesn’t really make sense to accept that, well, perhaps he did.

Anyway, it doesn’t make too much sense to speculate about the ins and outs of why Fury may or may not have called his BFF Captain Marvel over all these years. That’s because Avengers Endgame, which will fly into theaters next month, will probably address Captain Marvel’s whereabouts in the time between her solo film and the end of Infinity War. Not only that, but it should also explain why the heck she didn’t rush to the aid of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes when they weren’t feeling all that mighty. And hey, maybe she’ll show off some of the pages Nick Fury did send her over all those years. Maybe he kept her up-to-date on those cool Star Wars prequels she was missing while she was flying around in space. Keep watching to learn the real reason Nick Fury didn’t page Captain Marvel sooner!

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