Captain Marvel vs. Ikaris: Who Wins?

credit: Avengers: Endgame

There are plenty of powerhouses in the MCU and a lot of them have been altered since they arrived from the Marvel Universe comics, but a good number of them have been allowed to keep a heavy punch. Trying to determine who’s the most powerful among them, however, is still kind of difficult since it means comparing each character to each other, and at some point, some similarities make it difficult to determine who would come out as the winner. In a fight between two heavy hitters such as Ikaris from the Eternals and Captain Marvel, it’s easy to say, at a glance, that these two are fairly even when it comes to matching their powers and their abilities. On paper, it does look like Ikaris might be a little too tough for Carol Danvers to beat, and it’s an argument-building opinion that a lot of people might chime in on just to project their PC-laden feelings onto others, but the truth is that Carol is still human despite her altered physiology. Ikaris has never been given that distinction. 

credit: Captain Marvel

Being created by a Celestial kind of works in Ikaris’ favor. 

This should swing the fight in Ikaris’ favor, right? These days it’s hard to tell since the power levels of the various characters have been altered and messed around with so much that a lot of people do believe that Carol could end up taking this fight since she does possess hand-to-hand combat skills and her power is on a level that allows her to take on Thanos with the Infinity Gauntlet. Ikaris’ durability is a huge factor in this fight, but a lot of people are still going to draw on the comics to bolster this argument, which is kind of a mistake since, in the comics, the boundaries are far different than they’ve been in the MCU. 

The MCU has become notorious for bumping up the power levels of some characters, but not all of them. 

It’s very easy to fall into the old argument that ‘girl power’ is responsible for Captain Marvel’s current power set and the fact that she’s been allowed to become so insanely powerful, but one has to remember that the Eternals have been made just as powerful since their abilities are second to none in their own movie, apart from their issues with their enemies, the Deviants. It’s not hard to think that Captain Marvel would be shown as being more powerful than the Deviants without being seen in her Binary form. This should mean that she’s every bit as powerful as Ikaris and could likely take him, right? It’s hard to be certain, though, since the way that power shifts in the MCU make it feel as though, one way or another, Ikaris could be brought back in another form, and perhaps a far more powerful one if that’s the desire. In the meantime, Captain Marvel could also get stronger and far more skilled, depending on who’s telling the story. That’s the long and short of it. To be honest, the person telling the story is going to determine who can beat who and why. 

The trick is to use their base powers that have been seen in the movies, and in this case, things feel pretty even. 

What’s unfortunate is that we’ve never seen the Eternals take on the same threats that Carol and the other Avengers have, so there’s not a lot of ways to tell, from a movie perspective, who’s going to be the more powerful of these two. It can be reasoned that they probably would fight since it’s been surmised that Ikaris wouldn’t have fought Thanos and might have deduced that the mad titan was correct in his line of thinking. That’s a guess based on Ikaris’ decisions in the movie, but it does feel as though he and Carol wouldn’t have seen eye to eye and would have traded blows. A lot of characters that are pitted against each other in these theoretical fights would likely never fight unless things went sideways, but trying to determine who’s the strongest character and who would prevail is tough when not thinking in absolute terms. 

At base power, Ikaris takes this fight, but after a power increase, it feels more likely that Carol will win. 

This would be a tough fight from the start, but at base form, Ikaris would be able to overpower Captain Marvel since he could take some of the heaviest hits she could dish out, and he could deliver a few heavy hits of his own. But if things were to progress and Carol was able to absorb the energies that Ikaris might use against her, it’s fair to say that she could overcome the Eternal if she were to hit her Binary form. At that point, Ikaris would be overwhelmed and unable to evolve quickly enough to match Carol punch for punch. 

Captain Marvel is capable of evolving at some point, while Ikaris kind of needs the Celestials to accomplish such a feat.