Brie Larson promised to break the Internet with her tease for what became the first reveal of her in her Captain Marvel costume on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. And truth be told, if anyone could do it, it’s probably her (with all due respect to Kim Kardashian’s butt). After all, Brie is the one who, as Captain Marvel in Avengers 4, is going to go toe-to-toe with Thanos, the man who provided a smack-down to the Hulk before wiping out half of humanity across the galaxy. Bottom line: she’s  strong. Really strong. We’re talking Superman levels of power. 

“She’s so strong,” Brie told Britain’s Express, instantly begging the question how strong, “she can move planets. Yes, entire planets. So for me, it was, like, ‘How far can I go with this strength?'” In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly she adds, “She can be aggressive, and she can have a temper, and she can be a little invasive and in your face. She’s also quick to jump to things, which makes her amazing in battle, because she’s the first one out there and doesn’t always wait for orders. But the [not] waiting for orders is, to some, a character flaw.”

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Entertainment Weekly

The character — who audiences saw Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury reach out to via a communications device in the tag scene of Avengers: Infinity War just before he turned to dust — will actually be featured in her own solo film, being released in March and which will be set in the 1990s. Serving as an origin film, we’ll see Carol go from being an Air Force pilot to having her DNA joined with the alien race the Krell, eventually being transformed into Captain Marvel. The assumption is that her film will set things up for her return in the fourth Avengers film, and her eventual battle with James Brolin’s Thanos. 

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Marvel Comics

Variations of the Carol Danvers character have been around in the comics for decades, but in 2012 writer Kelly Sue Deconnick really defined her. In an interview with LootCrate.com, she offered a perspective that could very well be applicable to the film: “I needed to make her cool. I needed to make her somebody you cheer for, so my approach was Carol Danvers as Chuck Yeager. There is a particular glimmer in a fighter pilot’s eyes, and there’s no reason that should be different for a female character. So I wanted to give her swagger, and I think we managed to accomplish that. What I love about her is she’s headstrong and cocky, and she’s frequently wrong. That’s the thing about Carol: she can be wrong and learn from it and get back up. I find that more resonant than the Carol who always makes the right decision.”

Novelist turned Captain Marvel comics writer Margaret Stohl, at a convention appearance, commented, “What makes a character strong is not necessarily physical power. I’m interested in this idea of who gets to be the hero. Carol was literally a side character. She was there to be a pretty girl. She has a very messy hero’s journey, but then that’s also the journey of women in comics. As any woman will tell you, there’s almost a biological response to seeing something like Rey in Star Wars wielding a lightsaber or Wonder Woman doing Matrix-style bullet-dodging. We don’t get those experiences very often.”

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Marvel Studios

“People who are vulnerable,” she added, “but still rise to the challenge are more heroic. Marvel is very good at this. Tony Stark [Iron Man] is one of my favorite characters to write, and he’s as cracked as they come. Peter Parker [Spider-Man] is a mess, Thor is a mess, Hulk is a mess. The second I took over the Captain Marvel run, I sent Carol to therapy. I feel like, my God, you’d be in therapy the rest of your life if you had to do half the things these people do.” 

“All of the Marvel characters have flaws in them,” producer Kevin Feige explained to BoundingIntoComics.com, “all of them have a deep humanity to them. With Captain Marvel, she is as powerful a character as we’ve ever put in a movie. Her powers are off the charts, and when she’s introduced, she will be by far the strongest character we’ve ever had. It’s important, then, to counterbalance that with someone who feels real. She needs to have a humanity to tap into, and Brie can do that.”

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Marvel Comics

All of that sounds pretty serious, but Captain Marvel screenwriter Geneva Robertson-Dworet notes to Collider.com, “Captain Marvel has a very funny voice, and it’s more of an action-comedy, more like what we were talking about doing in the first draft I wrote for Tomb Raider… [but] that tone survived in Captain Marvel. I love funny female characters, so as Tomb Raider got more serious, I got even more committed to the idea of Captain Marvel being hilarious. Carol Danvers is one of the funniest comic book characters. She’s so sassy, she’s such a smartass, she won’t take sh-t from anyone, and the comic books do an amazing job at capturing that voice, and it was important that the entire Captain Marvel creative team [kept to that].”

When asked whether or not this has been more intense than most of her other film work (including her Academy Award winning turn in 2015’s Room), Brie replied to E! Online, “My favorite part is that stuff where you find the character. It’s, ‘How far can I take myself to reprogram my brain and reprogram my body to learn something new about myself?’ So this has been an amazing challenge.”

Captain Marvel wil be released on March 8, 2019.