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Rumor has it Disney cut a scene from “The Marvels” pointing to a lesbian romance

Fans have been begging for a romance between Captain Marvel and Valkyrie for years.
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Brie Larson in The Marvels
Brie Larson in The Marvels. Photo: Screenshot

Marvel fans are buzzing about a rumor that parent company Disney cut a scene from The Marvels which reportedly acknowledged an off-screen lesbian romance between two superheroes more explicitly.

The film, which debuted earlier this month to mixed reviews and a disappointing take at the box office, centers on three female characters – Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), and Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) – as they team up to save the universe. It also features a cameo by Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie, a bisexual character who has appeared in numerous other Marvel movies, primarily the Thor films directed by Taika Waititi.

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Marvel’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” originally included a queer kiss

Now it’s clear that Marvel and Disney downplayed both Aneka and Ayo’s sexuality in the final cut of the film.

Marvel fans have been rooting for a team-up and potential romantic relationship between Larson and Thompson’s characters for a while now. The actors have even fueled speculation, retweeting fan art depicting Captain Marvel and Valkyrie, and expressing solidarity with fans who “ship” the two characters.

“We’re here to ship, ya’ll!” Larson said during an appearance at ACE Comic Con in Chicago back in 2019 according to ComicBook.com. “We can dig into it, I’m just telling you we’re shipping.”

“Brie is my real-life queen, in general,” Thompson added. “If it becomes canon, that’s cool, too.”

The pair did, in fact, team up in The Marvels, with Thompson’s Valkyrie even planting a kiss on Larson’s character’s cheek at one point.

Reports of lengthy reshoots on the film (which are actually standard and built into the production schedule for Marvel movies) coupled with what reviewers have described as a somewhat chaotic, tonally uneven plot, have led to speculation that The Marvels may have been edited and cut down significantly ahead of its November 10 release. Over the weekend, a Marvel fan account on X posted a list of scenes that were reportedly cut from the film, including a moment that would have seemingly confirmed Valkyrie and Captain Marvel’s off-screen relationship.

According to @CanWeGetToast, the original version of the film would have seen either Thompson or Larson’s character telling the other that “we work better as friends,” possibly indicating they had been in a romantic relationship that had since ended.

It’s unclear where the information about the cut scenes came from, but that hasn’t stopped fans from expressing their disappointment and frustration with Marvel parent company Disney on social media.

Still, others argued that having that confirming the characters’ relationship while having it shunted off-screen would have been just as disappointing.

This isn’t the first time Marvel has cut or downplayed a lesbian romance. Earlier this year, Deadline reported that a scene featuring a kiss between Michaela Coel’s Aneka and Florence Kasumba’s Ayo was cut from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.  

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