Warning: The following contains spoilers for Captain Marvel #29 by Kelly Thompson, Jacopo Camagni, Espen Grundetjern and VC's Clayton Cowles, on sale now.
Marvel Cinematic Universe hero Carol Danvers has been to nearly every corner of the cosmos, but her recent trip to the future proved to be one of her most impactful adventures. In Kelly Thompson and Jacopo Camagni's Captain Marvel #29, Carol enlists the help of her long-time Asgardian rival Enchantress. If all goes according to plan, Enchantress will share enough magic knowledge to kill her own son, Ove.
When Captain Marvel was magically transported to the year 2052, she found herself in a dystopian world where much of the human race had died out. Ove, the son of Namor and Enchantress, ruled over the pseudo-apocalyptic landscape using his unique combination of Asgardian and Atlantean powers to cast spells on some of Earth's surviving heroes. Carol tried to fight him and end his reign of terror, but his mother helped him escape back in time into Carol's present. Now Danvers is trying to prevent Ove from bringing his awful future to fruition. She asks Doctor Strange, Magik, Sister Grimm, Scarlet Witch and an assortment of other magical heroes to teach her magic, but they all refuse, claiming that it is either undoable or unwise to give the powerful hero a crash course in magic.
Since none of the heroes agree to teach Danvers the mystic arts, she decides to consult a villain. At first, Enchantress is understandably reluctant to take her enemy on as a pupil, but when Carol explains that Doctor Strange doesn't want her to learn magic, Enchantress becomes interested. Captain Marvel chooses not to reveal that she'd like to use magic to kill Ove, the son Enchantress hasn't had yet, but she does explain that she needs to fight a villain who is using magic with origins in both Asgard and Atlantis.
Enchantress eventually agrees to train Captain Marvel. She clearly has her own ulterior motives, but Danvers doesn't feel she has any real right to resent her for that. After all, she is tricking the Asgardian into helping her kill her own son. At one point Captain Marvel chastises herself for being "worse than the Terminator." Clearly, she is wrestling with the ethical implications of manipulating Enchantress, but learning from Enchantress may prove to be equally morally complicated.
Carol's first magic training exercise takes her to the bottom of the ocean. Enchantress instructs her to steal a powerful glowing pearl called "the heart of the serpent." In order to get the pearl, Captain Marvel has to kill an ancient sea monster. She is clearly being taken advantage of and being asked to do things that go against her heroic nature, but she believes that learning magic is her only hope of stopping Ove from bringing about the end of the world, so she is willing to live in a moral grey area for a while if it means saving the world.
It is hard to imagine Carol becoming an expert sorcerer on the ocean floor, but after her magical and harrowing trip into the future, anything seems possible. As she copes with the trauma of her first-hand experience with a dystopian future, her moral compass becomes more flexible. Her ability to manipulate Enchantress is as impressive as it is alarming. Both the history and the future of the Marvel Universe have provided innumerable examples of the Asgardian's duplicity. But Captain Marvel has been unrelenting in her quest to stop Ove from destroying the world. She will definitely be a formidable opponent.