Vanessa Kirby has been widely and roundly praised for her work as Marvel Studios Sue Storm in The Fantastic Four: First Steps. After sacrificing herself to save Earth-828 from Galactus, Sue was brought back to life by her immensely powerful son, Franklin and while the fallout of that wasn’t addressed in the film, Kirby recently made it clear it will have an impact on her character going forward.
In an interview with Movie Web, Kirby–who has been in production on Avengers: Doomsday since March–gave some insight into why she’s excited to continue on with the character and teased a potential dark twist spinning out of her death and rebirth.
“I love that I get to continue with Sue because it’s so interesting,” said Kirby who said her character’s experience with death has been heavy on her mind.
I’ve been thinking a lot doing Avengers and stuff about how someone that’s been through, in the space of basically a week, someone who has given birth and has died and come back to life… how a death experience like that would change you.
-Vanessa Kirby
And she’s been doing more than just thinking about it as it sounds as though in preparation for Doomsday, Kirby has been doing some research into how near-death experiences can change a person. “I’ve been listening to a lot of people that have had those kind of experiences and what they learn, and therefore how different they are after they come back from that,” said Kirby. But how big of a change could it be?
If Marvel Studios followed one particular path from the pages of Marvel Comics, Sue’s return from the other side could be used to introduce Malice, a manifestation of the darkness inside the character. As wild as a direct adaptation of Malice into the MCU might be, some version of the character might be in the cards, especially since Kirby recently revealed her desire to explore an entirely different side of Sue than has been done in any other big screen iteration.
I’m dying to do Malice. She’s come from a really tough background. She lost her mother in a car crash. Her dad tried to save her mother. He couldn’t. He then spiraled, became an alcoholic, got locked up in prison for murdering a loan shark, and then died. Sue had to become a mother to Johnny. They were orphans. They had to fight for themselves. What I loved about her was that she chose a path that was inherently a positive one. She chose to keep her heart open and to stay warm. The Future Foundation, for me, wasn’t a noble political act, but it seemed to me that it’s Sue’s nature.
-Vanessa Kirby, Variety
Of course, Kirby’s interest in exploring that particular direction does not necessarily mean Malice will ever appear in the MCU; however, with the First Family set for appearances in a pair of Avengers films ahead of a likely sequel, there’s plenty of narrative runway to let Kirby take Sue down that road.
