Captain Marvel is set in 1995, pushing us back roughly 20 years in the MCU. This is before Nick Fury ever showed up in Tony Stark’s mansion teasing something called the “Avengers Initiative.” The story is somewhat of a prequel for the MCU, and very much an origin story for Fury, as he and Captain Marvel team up to save the day and take down at first the Skrulls, and finally, the Kree. Unbeknownst to literally everyone on Earth, there’s a Kree among them (Annette Bening’s Mar-Vell) and she’s created something so powerful the Kree want it for themselves to wipe out the Skrulls, and the Skrulls want it to flee the Kree once and for all and escape their persecution. Confusing? Yes. And it gets even more confusing because this “thing” Mar-Vell has hidden away in a downed fighter pilot is the tesseract.