Has Silver Surfer Ever Been a Woman? ‘Fantastic Four’s Female Silver Surfer Rumors, Explained

Another day, another unexpected one Fantastic Four a rumor We just got over the idea of ​​Pedro Pascal being our Reed Richards, and now there’s a chance the Silver Surfer could be female.

To be clear, unlike Pascal’s casting — which Deadline reported, though Marvel declined to comment on the matter — this is very much just a rumor. However, according to a self-styled scooper Jeff Sneider from The Hot Son podcast, the regular ally of The Fantastic Four will be revealed as a woman once they make their MCU debut. This same source claims that Galactus is the villain in the reboot movie and could be played by Javier Bardem.

Again, let’s not get too much stock in here right now, but for argument’s sake, was there ever a female Silver Surfer? Could this really be Marvel’s plan? Let’s take a look.

There is a female Herald Galactus, and she has already appeared in the movies

First of all, yes, there really is a female Silver Surfer in the pages of Marvel Comics. The Silver Surfer of Earth-829, known as Juno, is a gender variant of Norrin Radd. She only appeared in three issues of the 2010s Hercules: Twilight of a God comic, however, so she seems to be an unlikely figure to jump to the big screen.

It seems more plausible that Marvel could be planning to adapt Frankie Raye, a female Galactus Herald from the Earth-616 continuity. It was first introduced as a hobby for fire-fearing Johnny Storm in the 1975s Fantastic Four #164, Frankie’s phobia was later explained as a result of her self-repressed pyro powers. After embracing her own abilities, she volunteered to become the new Herald of Galactus to save Earth in the 1982s. Fantastic Four #244.

From then on, Frankie became known as Nova, although confusingly, she has nothing to do with Marvel’s other cosmic superhero, Nova. Although she’s not a Silver Surfer as such, Frankie is very much Radd’s female counterpart in the comics, so the two characters could be spliced ​​together to create the original female Silver Surfer in the MCU. .

Amazingly enough, Norrin Radd and Frankie Raye made their film debut together, in 2007. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Radd was memorably voiced by Laurence Fishburne (played by Doug Jones) and Raye was taken back to her roots and introduced as a romantic interest for Chris Evans’ Human Torch. This incarnation was played by Beau Garrett.

There are ways to make Silver Surfer a woman, then, but whether that’s the direction Marvel should take I’ll leave it up to the fans to debate (and debate, and debate).