Our DaCostas Captain Marvel continuation has now formally arrived at the “Okay, let’s guess who will be the bad guy” phase of his existence, with Deadline report that Zawe will play Ashton the bad guy in Brie Larson’s return to the role of everyone’s favorite cosmic MCU badass. Ashton is probably best known to the public for playing Josephina in the 2019 art horror satire Velvet Buzzsaw, along with starring roles in Netflix’s Wanderlust and British comedy series Fresh meat
And since Marvel isn’t just telling us who is playing Ashton, it’s time for that most holy place AV Club traditions: unfounded speculation, powered by nothing more than our knowledge of comic books that are sometimes 20-40 full years old. Now, since Carol Danvers actually doesn’t to have all those many non-Kree-specific enemies, ours soft money is here at Ashton playing Karla “Moonstone” Sofen, who served as Danvers’ evil counterpart during Marvel’s uber-gritty “Dark Reign” period in the late 2000sWhile she and Carol have (relatively) few direct run-ins (tangling more often with the first Captain Marvel and the Hulk), Moonstone is an interesting character in her own right: a rogue psychiatrist who enjoys killing people as much as she enjoys analyzing her enemiesAnd again: there are also ordinary really a very, very small number of “Captain Marvel villains ” run around the world of Marvel Comics, so she ends up becoming ours bestimate standard.
Or, maybe Ashton is playing a Skrull. (It’s always the Skrulls!)
Captain Marvel 2 is currently scheduled for release in November 2022, with DaCosta directing from a script written by WandaVision story editor Megan McDonnell.