Captain Marvel Directors Explain Why Jude Law’s Character Was Kept Secret

The directing duo for Captain Marvel recently discussed the secrecy around Jude Law’s role in the film leading up to its premiere. Marvel kept the fact that Law was Yon-Rogg very quiet in the lead-up, and in fact his true identity isn’t even revealed until midway through the movie. Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck told Digital Spy that the mystery was so that the reveal would have an appropriate payoff.

“He is the central villain from the comic books, Yon-Rogg,” Fleck said. “One of the things even when we were writing and cutting the movie together, in the first act of the movie, there were a few times where Carol referred to, in the dialogue, Yon-Rogg, she calls him by name early in the film. We cut those out of the script because we wanted to keep it mysterious about who he was so that any fans in the theatre who follows the comics, they wouldn’t necessarily know who he was.

He added, “I remember at one test screening, somebody right in front of me when they heard the name Yon-Rogg for the first time, which was well into the second act of the movie, they were whispering to their friend and super excited. That was the vibe we were trying to preserve by not announcing who Jude Law was playing.”

Boden also noted that a different end credits scene was initially planned, which would have seen Yon-Rogg end up on Sakaar from Thor: Ragnarok after being sent into space by Carol. “We toyed with different ideas of where she might send him off to at the end, and one time we joked that maybe she sent him off and he ended up in Sakaar much like Thor: Ragnarok,” she said. “We see his ship opening up in that junkyard and we know what’s coming for him.”