WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Captain Marvel: The End #1, by Kelly Thompson, Carmen Carnero, David Curiel and VC's Travis Lanham, on sale now.
For Captain Marvel, as with most heroes, there is rarely ever a true ending. Marvel's The End minis are meant to encapsulate what a proper ending for a character would be if it ever did take place, and with Captain Marvel: The End one of the coolest elements is actually the beginning. There's a blatant reference to Avengers: Infinity War, and it couldn't have been more perfect.
When Thanos first snapped away the Marvel Cinematic Universe's heroes in Infinity War there was no Captain Marvel to be seen. The first hint that she would soon swoop in to save the day came in the post-credits scene when Nick Fury barely manages to send out a distress signal on a modified beeper before getting dusted himself. The beeper's signal was meant for Captain Marvel, but in The End her beeper's message isn't so distressing.
Far from it, the Carol Danvers of Captain Marvel: The End thought she was one of the only people left alive from Earth after an apocalypse devastated it over a decade prior. After checking in on the ruins of Earth to confirm with her own eyes there were no survivors she made a life for herself among extraterrestrial species, albeit one frequently harassed by a sense of survivor's guilt and immense loss. Until her beeper goes off one-day saying "Avengers Assemble."
The comic stands in perfect parallel to the post-credits scene of Infinity War and the opening of Avengers: Endgame. In both stories Captain Marvel was not negligent of her duties, she was merely attending to them elsewhere when her home planet was devastated. Despite that, there's still a sense of obligation she feels that she could have done more. What's great about The End is that it focuses on that dynamic and makes it a Carol-centric story.
With such a massive cast in Endgame was difficult to give Captain Marvel much focus. The few moments she got were great, with her action beats emphasizing her sheer power, while actress Brie Larsen's performance sold subtler moments like when she explained to the other Avengers that she was needed off-planet to help other worlds devastated by the Snap. In both stories, there's a sense that the hero wants to do more. But in The End Carol takes center stage as she returns to her home for the first time in years to find that she truly can help.
There are only a scant few Avengers left who Captain Marvel knows personally, but many of them are the children of her fallen colleagues and she's thrilled to see them. Of course, there's nobody she's happier to see than Jessica Drew, a.k.a. Spider-Woman and Carol's best friend in the current timeline. She's eager to help the survivors fend off a giant monster threatening their vestigial civilization, but it turns out there's more she can do.
In a grand finale, in what she refers to as a "good death," Captain Marvel sacrifices herself to reignite the Sun and give the planet Earth new life. The moment is a callback to a similar feat she performed in the '90s and shows that from start to finish Captain Marvel: The End was willing to take her most memorable moments from comics and film alike and weave them into a perfect sendoff for the character.