The Marvels Suggests The Brood May Be Joining The MCU

The big revelation in the mid-credits sequence to The Marvels concerns the arrival of the X-Men to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is easily the most important event in the saga’s history and all the more pressing thanks to a very rough 2023. The scene finds Monica Rambeau awakening in a new reality and recuperating in the X-Mansion while Kelsey Grammer’s Hank McCoy and a variant of her mother attend to her.

The Marvels’ introduction of Fox’s X-Men universe provides vital insight into the MCU’s plans for Marvel’s Merry Mutants, which induced Disney to purchase an entire studio just to get the rights. It also leaves an opening for one of their long-standing villains to enter the saga. The Brood are a barely disguised rip-off of the Xenomorphs from Alien that have given the X-Men and Carol Danvers some of their most memorable adventures. They play a key role in the creation of Binary in the comics, which is a part of Carol’s long and convoluted history. With Binary now officially in the MCU, it’s possible that the Brood themselves will be along at some point too.

Who Are the Brood in Marvel Comics?

The Marvels Review: A Fun, if Flawed, Space Adventure

The Brood are an insectoid race, organized around a hive society and led by a queen. Human-sized and sentient, they’re equipped with stingers, powerful fangs, and natural body armor, as well as wings allowing them to fly. They reproduce by laying eggs in sentient hosts, who are then transformed into Brood as their DNA is overridden. Brood born from superhuman hosts inherit the powers of whoever gestated them, making them even more dangerous. They are sadistic, cruel and violent, viewing any non-Brood beings as either threats or hosts. Ironically, benign Brood exist as well.

The Brood first appeared in 1982’s Uncanny X-Men #155 (Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, Bob Wiaceck, Glynis Wein, and Joe Rosen), acting more or less as henchmen for the Shi’ar villain Deathbird before becoming threats in their own right just a few issues later. They have remained reliable X-Foes ever since, encompassing hundreds of issues and leading up to the recent “Revenge of the Brood” storyline beginning in 2023’s Captain Marvel #43 (Kelly Thompson, Sergio Davila, Sean Parsons, Arif Prianto, and Clayton Cowles). They have also tangled with the likes of The Guardians of the Galaxy and the Fantastic Four over the years.

The Brood Play a Key Role in Carol Danvers’ History

The Marvels Director Says MCU Movie Was Inspired by James Gunn & Christopher Nolan’s Movies

The Marvels may have opened the door to the Brood’s appearance in the MCU, thanks to the mid-credits scene. Having been trapped in another reality, Monica Rambeau finds her mother Maria attending to her in the X-Mansion, wearing Binary’s uniform and presumably wielding the same powers that roughly correspond to Carol Danvers’ in the “Sacred Timeline” MCU. Carol herself becomes Binary in the comics thanks to the Brood’s experimentation, which also encompasses their informal “coming out” as X-Men villains.

The X-Men and Carol are both captured by the Brood at the end of Uncanny X-Men #161 (Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, Bob Wiacek, Glynis Wein, and Tom Orzechowski), launching a multi-issue arc that establishes Carol as a truly cosmic entity. The mutants are implanted with queen eggs, while Carol (depowered at that time thanks to her infamous encounter with Rogue a short while previous) is experimented on to learn the source of “strange energies” that remain in her body. Wolverine’s healing factor allows him to reject the embryo in his system, and he rescues Carol from the Brood.

The experience leads to Carol’s transformation into Binary in Uncanny X-Men #164 (Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, Bob Wiacek, Janine Casey, and Joe Rosen), and she destroys the Brood embryos in the X-Men before they can hatch in Uncanny X-Men #166 (Chris Claremont, Paul Smith, Bob Wiacek, Glynis Wein and Tom Orzechowski).

How the Brood Can Fit into The MCU

Can the X-Men and Fantastic 4 Actually Save the MCU?

The mid-credits scene in The Marvels posits Maria Rambeau as Binary. If her origins match Carol’s assumption of the mantle, it means the Brood exist in the reality Monica Rambeau now finds herself in. This is in keeping with their comic book origins in another universe, intimated during their introduction in the 1980s and specified in 2019’s History of the Marvel Universe #1 (Mark Waid, Javier Rodriguez, Alvaro Lopez, and Joe Caramanga). They arrive through the dark matter flow of a collapsing universe, and are promptly captured by the Kree, who weaponize them before setting them loose on the galaxy.

Read Related Also: WATCH: Pro-Palestinian Demonstrators Confront Justin Trudeau at Restaurant

All of that loosely fits with the depiction of the Kree in The Marvels and elsewhere, and with a version of Binary now in play, delivering the Brood — in one reality or another — may follow in short order. Of course, there’s a practical reason why they haven’t been used before now: their obvious emulation of the Xenomorph in the Alien franchise. It’s no surprise that the movies and other adaptations have shied away from them, and the one big exception — X-Men: The Animated Series — proves the point. They appear in Season 3, Episode 19, “Love in Vain” as “the Colony,” heavily modified and resembling upright reptiles rather than insectoids. Any closer would have engendered justified criticism of ripping off the Alien movies.

Strangely enough, that’s now much less of a concern than it was just a few years ago. Disney purchased 20th Century Fox in 2019, so they currently own the rights to the Xenomorph as well as Marvel. After considerable hemming and hawing, the production of the first Alien movie under the Disney banner is ongoing and was originally slated for an Aug. 2024 release. While the recent writers’ and actors’ strikes have disrupted that timeline, the project is still a go as of this writing. That makes the Brood an enticing lookalike tie-in to the MCU, which could use a boost as they bring Charles Xavier’s gang into the saga at long last. Suddenly, Binary’s appearance may carry more weight than it seems, and the Brood’s arrival may be surprisingly close.

The Marvels is now playing in theaters.