Who will be Carol Danvers, aka Captain Marvel? Marvel has been working on Captain Marvel for quite some time, making the film official last year (before pushing it back a few months to fit Spectacular Spider-Man into the schedule). There was a hot minute where Captain Marvel was going to make her first appearance at the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Joss Whedon went so far as to shoot an FX plate into which an actress, once hired, could be inserted. But Marvel decided that Carol was too big a character to introduce in a cameo, and so they replaced her with Scarlet Witch.

There have been a lot of rumors about who would play the role, and a lot of them have surrounded Emily Blunt, once up for the part of Black Widow, a role she had to pass on due to other obligations. Blunt is a good choice, and Edge of Tomorrow convinced a lot of fans that she could do it. But we haven't heard anything official since then (although, again, I keep getting whispers with her name).

Maybe that's because it isn't happening. Heroic Hollywood is reporting that Marvel has taken to another candidate: Rebecca Ferguson, who blew up the screen this summer as Ilsa Faust in Mission: Impossible: Rogue: Nation. It was a star-making turn and she was instantly courted by everybody in Hollywood, with Fox taking a run at her for Gambit. Wisely she turned the role down... but would she turn down any role at all? Carol Danvers is a juicy part, and a franchise lead. It's the kind of foundational role that allows an actor to really do whatever else they want in between film, especially in a post-Ike Perlmutter world where maybe salaries get a little higher.

It is interesting that this name has come up; I loved Ferguson in Mission: Impossible, but her rushing to the top of the list means that she's definitely replacing someone who Marvel liked a few months ago. Is that because the other person (Blunt?) isn't interested? Or is Marvel fickle? Or, more sinisterly, is this a Marvel leak intended to put the fear of God into Blunt's negotiators?

Captain Marvel is dated for summer 2018, which is a ways off. If Marvel is hiring now, they're definitely thinking about putting Carol Danvers in a film before her own, but the only movies that make sense (from my perspective) are Infinity War Part 1, also a 2018 movie, and Captain America: Civil War, which has wrapped shooting. Sure, reshoots will happen, but if Marvel didn't want her being intro'ed in a cameo role in Ultron, why cameo her in now?

It's all so mysterious, but this is the fun part, where there's a lot of speculation to chew over. So get to chewing in the comments.