If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

Marvel is retconning Captain Marvel and her history as Ms. Marvel "with a new "dark family secret"

Carol Danvers has a complicated past. In 2026, its going to get even more complicated for Captain Marvel.

Captain Marvel: Dark Past #1 cover
Image credit: Lucas Werneck (Marvel Comics)

Marvel Comics' Captain Marvel is no stranger to change, evolving over time and getting higher, further, and faster in her trajectory to become one of the company's top heroes. But in 2026, Marvel Comics is looking to change her future by changing her past.

Captain Marvel: Dark Past #1 variant cover
Image credit: Ejikure (Marvel Comics)

Scheduled to debut in April 2026, the five-issue series Captain Marvel: Dark Past by writer Paul Jenkins and artist Lucas Werneck is looks to ignite interest by writing about a hereto unknown "dark family secret" that upon its exposure, will thrust Carol Danvers to revisit her past in her first superhero identity, Ms. Marvel.

"Captain Marvel is such a great character who has also appeared as Ms. Marvel, Warbird and even Binary. With such a rich and complex past, under the guidance of so many amazing and talented writers, there is a ton of material for me to mine," Jenkins says in the announcement. "I hope to bring my brand of characterization and storytelling to this great character, to examine what makes Carol who she is, and perhaps even to bring out a new wrinkle or two."

Captain Marvel: Dark Past #1 cover
Image credit: Lucas Werneck (Marvel Comics)

Jenkins has become a defacto expert in characters with secretive pasts, as he's best known for co-creating the Sentry, and being a key part of a marketing ploy which falsely claimed the characters was an unpublished creation by Stan Lee and an artist later revealed to be completely fictional. 

In Captain Marvel: Dark Past, her secret is brought to the light by a new group called DNVR (is that short for Danvers?), and their reveal forces her "to question everything she thought she knew about the Danvers name!" As the Marvel description of the series continues. "Carol suspects that answers lie in an investigation she was forced to drop when she was a journalist, and as lost memories from her past as Ms. Marvel resurface, she’s faced with her toughest battle yet."

From the sounds of it, Captain Marvel: Dark Past could be about her parentage, which in comics had her biological mother being secretly a Kree secret agent. 

Captain Marvel: Dark Past #1 (of 5) goes on sale April 1.


Get ready for what's next with our guide to upcoming comics, how to buy comics at a comic shop, and our guide to Free Comic Book Day 2025.  

 

Chris Arrant

Chris Arrant: Chris Arrant is the Popverse's Editor-in-Chief. He has written about pop culture for USA Today, Life, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher's Weekly, Marvel, Newsarama, CBR, and more. He has acted as a judge for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, the Harvey Awards, and the Stan Lee Awards. (He/him)

Comments

Want to join the discussion? Please activate your account first.
Visit Reedpop ID if you need to resend the confirmation email.

View Comments (0)

Find out how we conduct our review by reading our review policy