Captain Marvel: Everything You Need To Know About The Flerken

In the months leading up to the release of Captain Marvel, we were led to believe that Goose the cat would be a very important part of the movie. And we were right to be excited because of course, it was revealed in the film that Goose wasn’t really a cat at all – she was a Flerken.

While uninitiated fans who don’t read the comics won’t know what that means, readers of the comics known that the Flerken are a fascinating species. Anyone who saw the tentacles coming out of her mouth should know that by now. So, here is Everything You Need To Know About The Flerken.

8 They can understand human conversation

Real cats can vaguely understand what humans are saying. At the very least, when you tell them to sit down or leave the room, they can figure out from the body language what that means. But the Flerken are different. They can understand the actual words that humans are saying to each other.

Their intellect is the same level as a human’s and they don’t just comprehend their spoken language – they can actually understand the content of it and the flow of the conversation. So, all that time Nick Fury was telling Goose the cat to kill the Kree, he could understand.

7 The Flerken can lay up to 117 eggs

In the comics, Captain Marvel’s cat’s name is Chewie, not Goose. Obviously, “Goose” is taken from Maverick’s wingman in Top Gun, which is the same spirit of how Chewie got his name (taken from Han Solo’s co-pilot, of course), being named after an aviation-related figure from popular culture.

Anyway, in the comics, Carol goes on a cosmic adventure with Chewie and, while they’re out in space, he lays a bunch of eggs. This is how she finds out he’s not actually a cat after all, but rather an alien known as a Flerken. The Flerken are capable of laying up to 117 eggs.

6 Rocket Raccoon hates the Flerken

In the Captain Marvel movie, the Skrulls are terrified of the Flerken. Ben Mendelsohn’s Talos character kept saying that Goose wasn’t a cat and he was terrified of her. We later discovered what he meant by this when the Flerken started eating up the Kree Starforce with its massive tentacles.

But in the comics, it’s not Talos who identifies the cat as a Flerken – it’s Rocket Raccoon. He despises the Flerken and wants to kill Carol’s little pal before he can lay any eggs, but she stops him from doing it. Rocket clearly has a contentious relationship with the Flerken, which could be explored in Avengers: Endgame.

5 Flerken sell for a lot of money on the black market

After Rocket Raccoon wanted to kill Chewie and Carol wouldn’t let him, he suggested another option: sell him on the black market. Apparently, the Flerken are quite rare in the galaxy and, due to their immense power, they sell for a pretty penny on the black market.

According to the Marvel Database, there are only 118 Flerken in the known universe, so their population is running pretty low. However, since Carol loves her pet cat/Flerken so much, she refused to sell him. Plus, there is the obvious to consider, that he could get into the wrong hands and be used for evil.

4 They can fit entire universes in their mouths

As shown by the many tentacles sticking out of Goose’s mouth in the climactic battle sequence in Captain Marvel, the Flerken can fit more in their mouths than your average Earth cat. In fact, they can fit entire universes in there. These pocket dimensions can be stored in what are known as “bubbles.”

That’s how the Tesseract managed to fit in there. And they don’t have to fumble around to find anything – if it’s in there, they can summon it out at will, which is how the Tesseract ended up getting coughed up like a furball on Nick Fury’s desk in the post-credits scene.

3 The Flerken first appeared in Marvel Comics in 2006

The first appearance of the Flerken in Marvel Comics canon was back in 2006 in “Giant-Size Ms. Marvel Vol. 1 #1.” This was back when Carol Danvers had the Ms. Marvel moniker as opposed to the “Captain” title she is best known for today. However, in that comic, Chewie was not identified as a Flerken.

This wouldn’t happen until “Captain Marvel Vol. 8 #7,” by which time Carol had taken on the Captain Marvel alias. She went on an adventure into outer space with Chewie and, when he started laying eggs and spewing tentacles, she realized he was actually an alien creature.

2 They’ve mastered interdimensional travel – sort of

The Flerken’s ability to store entire universes and pocket dimensions in the subspaces within their mouths also allow them to travel from dimension to dimension. However, it isn’t easy and the whole process can be pretty dicey. This is hardly surprising, since traveling to an entirely different dimension that is stored within a “bubble” in your own mouth doesn’t sound like it would be a breeze.

As a result, the Flerken rarely use this power – but it is one of their powers, nonetheless. If push really came to shove in Avengers: Endgame or Captain Marvel 2, Goose could get Carol from one dimension to another in order to protect her.

1 It’s pretty easy to render the Flerken powerless

Since all of the strength and abilities of the Flerken are dependent on their mouths, if you manage to somehow muzzle their mouth – whether it’s by catching them off-guard or sneaking up behind them – it will render them powerless. Once you cover that mouth up, the Flerken might as well by a regular Earth cat.

They can’t get their tentacles out, they can’t store anything in their internal subspaces, and they can’t bite you with their fangs. They become as small and defenseless as an actual cat. So, Talos needn’t worry too much about Goose – all he has to do is muzzle him and he’ll be totally harmless.

NEXT: What Nobody Realized About Captain Marvel's Goose the Cat