Captain Marvel follows Carol Danvers, a brilliant but reckless Air Force fighter pilot whose career collapses after a disastrous mission. Given a second chance working aboard a S.W.O.R.D. orbital research station, Carol becomes caught in an attack involving Skrull infiltrators and Dr. Walter Lawson, secretly the Kree scientist Mar-Vell. When Mar-Vell's experimental faster-than-light engine explodes, Carol is exposed to Tesseract energy and Kree DNA, transforming her into a powerful human-Kree hybrid. Taken to the Kree Empire, Carol joins Starforce and becomes a celebrated cosmic soldier, but her growing confidence and recklessness eventually cause her to question the Kree's supposedly noble mission.
Carol discovers that the Kree-Skrull War has been manipulated by the Supreme Intelligence, which has deliberately prolonged the conflict to maintain Kree power. She also learns that Mar-Vell secretly had a child, Dorrek, with a Skrull named Anelle, making him a living symbol of the possibility of peace between the two civilizations. When Dorrek is captured, Carol turns against the Kree and fights to save him, eventually realizing that becoming another weapon of war would make her no different from the forces she opposes. After Mar-Vell sacrifices himself to save her, Carol embraces the mantle of Captain Marvel, defeats the Supreme Intelligence, and helps bring the war toward an end. Returning to Earth, she reconciles with Maria and finally lets go of her lifelong need for validation, choosing instead to become a protector of worlds across the galaxy.
