Did Captain Marvel Cast Lashana Lynch as Rick Jones?

SPOILER WARNING: This article contains major spoilers for Ant-Man and the Wasp, in theaters now.

Captain Marvel may have cast Rick Jones right under our noses -- but this version of the character may be more of a Raquel than a Rick. When She’s Gotta Have It star DeWanda Wise was cast in a mysterious role back in January, Marvel Cinematic Universe fans began to speculate about just who she could be playing. Since then, Wise has left the role and been replaced by Still Star-Crossed's Lashana Lynch, but the role remains a mystery. Thanks to a key moment in Ant-Man and the Wasp and the film's source material, though, we believe we've figured it out. Lynch may be playing Rick Jones, a character central to The Kree-Skrull War conflict.

First, let's talk about the speculation surrounding Lynch's role. Since the role was announced, many have assumed she will play a character like Monica Rambaeu's Spectrum (originally a Captain Marvel herself) or Captain Universe. While this writer would like to see these characters in the MCU post-haste, the act of including one or the other in this particular movie may be a missed opportunity. After all, Captain Marvel takes place in the 90s; considering this, Lynch may play a one-off character who will stay in this era. Seeing as the MCU takes place in real time (for the most part), her character will be significantly older by the time of Avengers 4 -- if she survives the events of Captain Marvel, anyway. Spectrum and Captain Universe could spin off into their own franchise, so introducing them in the 90s as opposed to the present would simply be a misuse of the characters.

In order to postulate about Captain Marvel, we need also discuss The Kree-Skrull War and Rick Jones' role in it. The comic opens as the Kree soldier Mar-Vell returns to Earth from the Negative Zone. Though he had been trapped there for a while, he was able to escape with a little help from Jones. Prior to the event comic, the Kree Supreme Intelligence had telepathically linked Mar-Vell and Jones together. When Jones donned a set of nega-bands and clashed them together, he could switch places with Mar-Vell for a brief period of time, allowing Mar-Vell to roam the Earth.

So, at the start of The Kree-Skrull War, Jones and Mar-Vell swapped places to free Mar-Vell from the Negative Zone, if only for a moment. However, due to his time in the Negative Zone, he had absorbed a lethal amount of radiation. Thanks to some help from Vision, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, he ultimately got cured -- but not before he used the Fantastic Four's portal to the Negative Zone to free Jones.

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After Mar-Vell and the Avengers foiled Ronan the Accuser's plot to return the Earth to prehistoric times, Mar-Vell's existence was outed to the Earth's public, sparking a McCarthy-like witch hunt for aliens. Though the newly minted Alien Activities Commission demanded Mar-Vell, the Avengers sent him away to a private farm for his own safety. Unfortunately, the private farm was a trap set up by the Skrulls, leading to Mar-Vell's capture and return to space. In Skrull space, the Emperor Dorrek VII demanded Mar-Vell make a powerful Kree weapon for them.

Subsequently, the Avengers helped the Inhumans fight off a power grab by Maximus the Mad, who had enlisted help from the Kree to overthrow his brother Black Bolt. During the skirmish, Jones -- who had tagged along -- was captured and brought into Skrull space. The Avengers followed. As the Avengers clashed with the Skrulls, Jones was rescued by the Supreme Intelligence, who helped Jones unleash some latent mental powers. With these mental powers, Jones manifested projections of Golden Age heroes that attacked the Supreme Intelligence's usurpers, including Ronan, and restored the Kree leader's powers. He also sent a bolt across the universe that froze the Skrulls and allowed the Avengers to win the conflict, thus ending the war.

As such, it's easy to see that Jones was a critical part of The Kree-Skrull War -- so critical, in fact, that it would be difficult to imagine an adaptation without him. However, the Captain Marvel movie hasn't made any casting announcements that appear to fill such a role. At least, it hasn't cast a young white man that fits Jones' description, but the MCU hasn't hesitated to race- or gender-bend its supporting cast before. For instance, in 2016's Doctor Strange, the Ancient One was a Celtic woman (controversially) and Baron Mordo was a black man, where they were a Tibetan man and a white man respectively in the comics. Additionally, Spider-Man: Homecoming's Mary Jane was cast as a young black woman in Zendaya.

So saying, Marvel Studios has set more than enough precedence for race- and gender-bending Captain Marvel's cast of characters, which means Lynch's character could come as a surprise for fans of the comics. Further, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige recently revealed that the MCU will tell more diverse stories moving forward. "The success of Black Panther, like a lot of things with the history of Marvel Studios, has just emboldened us to just continue doing that and to continue heading forward with that," he said just last month. Marvel could have already made good on this promise by casting Lynch as Rick Jones.

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Further, a key moment of Ant-Man and the Wasp lays the groundwork for the Mar-Vell/Rick Jones connection as it was set up in The Kree-Skrull War. Ant-Man and the Wasp introduced the idea of Quantum Entanglement, which allowed Janet van Dyne to "possess" Scott Lang for a short time. By possessing Scott, she was able to share an important equation, which allowed her husband Hank Pym to find her in the Quantum Realm. However, she was never physically present; she just used Scott as a mouthpiece -- and he never even realized it. Captain Marvel could easily build off this phenomenon, using it to link Carol Danvers to a character like Rick Jones.

If this is indeed the case, Nick Fury may not have directly contacted Captain Marvel in the post-credits scene of Avengers: Infinity War. Instead, he could have contacted Rick Jones -- or Captain Marvel's version of him, anyway. That could be the signal needed for Lynch's character to clash the nega-bands together and bring Carol back to Earth from wherever she's been (which this writer believes is another dimension, perhaps even the MCU's version of the Negative Zone).

It's difficult to imagine Captain Marvel's adaptation of The Kree-Skrull War without Rick Jones, but we may not have to. Though Lashana Lynch's role remains a mystery, previous MCU installments have laid the groundwork for her to play a version of Rick Jones. Ant-Man and the Wasp, in particular, set up the important link between Rick Jones and Captain Marvel from the source material. Further, the 20th MCU film left Ant-Man stranded in the Quantum Realm, in much the same way Jones was stranded in the Negative Zone after switching places with Mar-Vell. Hopefully for Scott Lang's sake, Carol will manage to rescue him in just the same was Mar-Vell did Jones. Either way, it seems Rick Jones is about to make his -- or, rather, her -- grand MCU debut in Captain Marvel.

Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck from a script they wrote with Liz Flahive, Carly Mensch, Meg LeFauve, Nicole Perlman and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Captain Marvel stars Brie Larson as Carol Danvers, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Jude Law as Mar-Vell, Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson, Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser, Djimon Hounsou as Korath the Pursuer, Gemma Chan as Minn-Erva, and Ben Mendelsohn, Lashana Lynch, Algenis Perez Soto, McKenna Grace and Annette Bening in as-yet-undisclosed roles. The film arrives March 8, 2019.