The Weird History of Goose, Captain Marvel's Adorable Cat

This post contains spoilers for Captain Marvel.

Captain Marvel is introducing an extraordinary female heroine, the very first of her kind in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. No, I’m not talking about Carol Danvers; I’m talking about a little orange cat named Goose.

Goose, known as Chewie in the comics after a certain Wookiee, is Carol's constant companion, stowing away again and again on her spaceship so she can accompany her favorite human on her adventures. She might look like a cute brown- and orange-furred tabby, but there's actually more to this kitty than meets the eye.

When Captain Marvel stumbled upon the Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014's Captain Marvel #7, Rocket Raccoon immediately spotted Chewie for what she was: a Flerken, an extremely rare alien species that can teleport and house small pocket dimensions inside their bodies. They also reveal rows of horrifying tentacles whenever they open their sweet kitten mouths.

Carol didn't immediately believe Rocket, who wanted to buy Chewie to sell her on the black market, but after Chewie laid a bunch of eggs on Carol's ship (117, to be exact), there was only one logical explanation: She's definitely an alien! Goose's true origins get a slightly more blatant reveal in the film version: When Carol and the crew makes it onto Mar-Vell's spaceship and a bunch of Kree show up, Goose opens her mouth, revealing the multitudes of tentacles within, to fend off the enemies. 

Goose is played by four different very professional cat actors named Reggie, Rizzo, Gonzo, and Archie -- Reggie is the one you're most familiar with, as he's the cat who was used in all the close-up beauty shots and for most of the movie's promotional material. But don't let that confuse you: Goose is still very much a girl cat in the movie.

The world already loves Goose, but her human co-stars may be a different story. Samuel L. Jackson said at a press conference that he is "not a cat person" (it's nothing personal: he's "not a dog, bird or a fish person, either"), and poor Brie Larson is deathly allergic to cats: "It was like the joke on set because I could do really crazy things stunt-wise, but the cat was a big obstacle for me."

Probably because of this, and because cats are notoriously hard to convince to do anything you want them to do, a lot of Goose in the movie is CGI, especially the parts where she opens her mouth and an army of tentacles lashes out of her mouth to drag the bad guys into her gaping mouth. She also swallows the Tesseract, which Carol's mentor Wendy Lawson (actually a Kree scientist named Mar-Vell hiding on Earth) was going to use to build a powerful intergalactic engine, and later coughs it up onto Nick Fury's desk in the movie's final post-credits scene. So, that explains how S.H.I.E.L.D. got ahold of one of the six Infinity Stones that plays a huge part in The Avengers. Fury's missing eye is also revealed to be the result of Goose scratching him on the face. Don't mess with a Flerken, people.

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