Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Valentina in Wakanda Forever holds the key to Marvel’s next phase

For all of the superheroes and villains in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there is never a shortage of regular (apparent) people working for the various governmental organizations around the world. In fact, Contessa Allegra de Fontaine, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, is one of the MCU’s most recent additions to the secret ranks His field and veep Fame. If you’ve kept up with Marvel movies, you know that Fontaine keeps appearing in one heroic story or another.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier marked the first appearance of in the MCU, but not the last; she showed up too Black widow‘s mid-credits sequence in which she recruited Florence Pugh’s Yelena into her service. And now she’s back in the Black Panther Consequence. So where is this all going?

[Ed. note: This story contains major spoilers for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.]

Image: Marvel Studios

fountains Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Appearance is the most significant role of Louis-Dreyfus’ time in the MCU so far, but it rides the same line of subtle mischief that she captured so well in her first two cameos. In the film, Fontaine is the new head of the CIA and the direct boss of her former husband Everett Ross (Martin Freeman), who has been secretly passing information to Wakanda since Shuri saved his life in the first film.

In her quest to help the United States obtain Vibranium, Fontaine spends most of this film as an enemy of Wakanda, suspecting her of sabotaging other countries’ attempts to mine the mineral. She and Everett aren’t ultimately all that important to the plot, but by and large this seems little more than a pit stop for Fontaine as she moves closer to her next gigs and bigger ambitions.

As die-hard Marvel fans know, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier sets up Val as the anti-Nick Fury and recruits John Walker’s disgraced “Captain America” ​​for an unspoken initiative that could harness his more violent instincts. From here, the MCU could follow the comics just about anywhere.

Who is Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine in the comics?

Image: Brian Michael Bendis, Jonathan Hickman, Stefano Caselli/Marvel Comics

Well, depending on when you ask that question, she’s either an Italian jet setter-turned-longtime SHIELD agent or… Madame Hydra.

First envisioned in 1967 by Jim Steranko for a Nick Fury and Captain America crossover story, writer Steve Englehart brought Valentina into the actual Captain America comics in 1972, her adventures and take a big swing.

Valentina dated Nick Fury for a while when she was a SHIELD agent. (Pro tip: don’t date your co-workers if you belong to an organization where 50% of the employees are sleeper agents.) She also ran an all-female secret agent team for a time. It eventually turns out that her Italian heritage was a cover story and that she really was a Russian agent – that doesn’t seem like the MCU’s way of going about it, but who knows!

The last thing Valentina did in the Marvel Comics continuity was to defect and become a senior leader of Hydra, adopting the commonly used name “Madame Hydra” until she betrayed Hydra to another secretive international spy operation. If the Marvel Cinematic Universe wanted Hydra to raise its serpentine head again, Valentina could be a way to do that as well.

Or the MCU could go in a completely different direction, unrelated to what comic book writers have done to Valentina before. Her next confirmed appearance is to see her again in 2024 thunderbolts, in which she’ll theoretically oversee a team of less-than-noble, Avengers-adjacent fighters. Confirmed for the team are Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Red Justice (David Harbour), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen). Could Black Panther‘s Everett Ross or another member of Wakanda?

Don’t even bother guessing: if there’s one thing we know for sure about the MCU iteration of Valentina, it’s that she can basically do whatever she wants, with whom she wants, and show up anywhere.