Speaking in an interview with Variety, actress Brie Larson, aka “Captain Marvel,” expressed her dissatisfaction with the Marvel Comic Universe for its paucity of LGBT superheroes, saying, “We gotta move faster.”
Larson was interviewed by Variety’s Marc Malkin for the first episode of Variety and iHeartMedia’s new film podcast, “The Big Ticket,” when Malkin stated that when he was growing up, he never thought he’d see a LGBTQ superhero. Larson responded, “That breaks my heart to hear that, because there’s no reason. I don’t understand how you could think that a certain type of person isn’t allowed to be a superhero. So to me it’s like, we gotta move faster. But I’m always wanting to move faster with this stuff.”
Larson works assiduously as a social justice warrior; as The Daily Wire has reported, when Larson was touring to promote Captain Marvel, “She insulted sound guys putting microphones on women; she decried white men asking questions during the media tour.”
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter (THR) in February, Larson spoke of her daily gym routine in which she reportedly dead-lifted 225 pounds. THR wrote:
There were days when the intensity of the training reduced her to tears and days when she got irritated by men at Walsh’s West Hollywood gym who doubted her strength. “This guy watched me lift something really heavy, and he went, ‘Wow, I can’t even lift that!’ As if he were the epitome of health,” Larson says. “I said, ‘Yeah, I guess you’re going to have to rethink your gender norms.'”
After Captain Marvel was released, according to Out, some fans expressed their wish that the Marvel character Valkyrie and Captain Marvel would disclose a gay relationship with each other. Out wrote:
In the weeks since Captain Marvel was released, fans have latched onto Valkyrie — who survived Thanos’ snap and will return in Avengers: Endgame — and Carol Danvers as their new favorite queer Marvel ship. Thompson and Brie Larson have both enthusiastically supported the response, even sharing fan art on Twitter.
Actress Tessa Thompson, who plays Valkyrie, told the Los Angeles Times:
It didn’t even occur to me, legitimately, that it was necessarily a romantic thing. I don’t even know what happens in the canon in terms of those characters or if they ever intersect, but I just love the idea of more women Marvel characters getting to intersect. I just think it’s so cool and it’s time and why not? There’s so many compelling female characters inside of the MCU. And just selfishly, when I get to see those women in passing, they’re all such cool women. So the idea of getting to spend time with them and hang out is so fun. I’m just excited that this new phase promises to have women and queer folks.
Thompson told Rolling Stone that one scene cut from “Thor: Ragnarok” depicted a woman exiting Valkyrie’s bedroom, adding, “It wasn’t Marvel or Disney or anyone extracting that because it was an issue. It just was like, that particular moment didn’t make sense in the context of the scene. And there were other beautiful things where you get a sense of her backstory.” Thompson said of her part that she ”played her as a woman that’s queer.”
H/T Twitchy