With the release of Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers became the first female character to lead a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie. While previous women have been in supporting roles, none have headlined their own movie. The introduction of Captain Marvel to the Cinematic Universe comes during an end credits scene of Avengers: Infinity War when Nick Fury pages someone and her logo appears.

Carol Danvers is an Air Force pilot who is on a mission with her superior when they are shot down by a Kree, an alien pilot. The Kree take Carol, now called Vers, to his planet. She loses her memory, but the aliens find her useful and train her to join their military while they are in a war with Skrulls, an alien race who can shapeshift themselves into anything they see down the to DNA.

While on a mission, Vers lands on Earth where S.H.I.E.L.D. is called to deal with her. Agent Nicholas Fury does not believe her story until he sees her fighting a Skrull where he then joins her in her hunt for more information about her past. She finds her best friend who reminds her that she is Carol Danvers. She then goes on to fight the war, but I won’t spoil that for you.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been around for eleven years now, following the release of Iron Man in 2008, and women have always been in strong, secondary roles, but have never genuinely starred themselves. For years, there has been talk about Black Widow or Scarlet Witch getting their own movie, however, both of their backstories are explained in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Following the release of Captain Marvel and the success of opening weekend, Marvel finally announced that they are working on a stand-alone movie about Black Widow. Whether the movie will dive into her backstory more or show one of her S.H.I.E.L.D. missions is yet to be announced but either way, Marvel fans are excited to finally learn more about Natasha Romanoff, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, instead of just Natasha Romanoff, the Avenger.

Marvel waited to announce Black Widow’s movie until the release of Captain Marvel because they did not want the news to be pushed behind the excitement and wanted to see how the first female-led movie would perform at the box office. On opening weekend, Captain Marvel became the number one movie in the world after beating out fellow Marvel-alumni such as Chris Pratt in The Kid and Sebastian Stan in I’m Not Here.

Marvel fans have always known that female-lead movies would do well in the box office because they knew that’s what they wanted to see. Marvel needed proof that they could produce these movies and still stay at the top of the charts. Hopefully, Captain Marvel’s success gives the executives at Marvel the extra push they need to start cranking out more female-lead movies for phases five and six of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.