5 'Avengers: Infinity War' fan theories that will keep you going till the next film
Have you seen Avengers: Infinity War yet? No? Well, you should probably stop reading right here. The following post has more spoilers than the number of films that Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has. So, in the words of Captain America:
Okay, with hopes in mind that everyone who hasn’t seen the film has stopped reading, let us do a quick recap of what happened in, perhaps, the most-awaited Marvel movie so far. Thanos, the nihilist and complex Marvel supervillain (possibly a first in MCU’s history, is on a quest to get his hands on the six Infinity Stones. After a lot of struggle, he finally does. In the process, he kills Loki, Heimdall, Gamora and Vision. Once his gauntlet is complete, Thanos does what he set out to do, kill half of all living beings in the universe. This half included a lot of major characters like Spider-Man, Dr Strange, Black Panther, Nick Fury, all the Guardians of Galaxy, and Scarlet Witch, who all fade away into dust, quite literally.
But what next?
1) First and foremost, let us revisit the end-credits scene. Oh, you did not see that? Is this the first Marvel movie you went for, because the end-credit scene is always important. Everyone knows that.
Anyway, the scene features Nick Fury trying to reach Captain Marvel - a yet-to-be-seen superheroine in the MCU - as he too fades away into nothingness. Is Captain Marvel going to be the saviour of the universe and the now defeated Avengers? A first look of the Captain Marvel film is already out and it raises a lot of questions mostly because the movie, in all probability, is a prequel.
Introduced first in 1968 in the comic books, Carol Danvers, after being exposed to alien technology, becomes Ms Marvel. Among her many powers are superhuman strength, speed, flight and can absorb energy to project it back at her enemies. The last one seems more relevant than others because she might be the only one who can use Thanos’s powers of time reversal and bring everything back to where it started.
2) Dr Strange in the film tells Iron Man that he saw more than 14 million possible outcomes of their battle against Thanos. It is only fitting that the reason why Dr Strange willingly hands over the Time Stone to Thanos is because that gives birth to the only temporal universe where Thanos can be defeated.
3) Most of the fan theories revolve around time, and that can be tricky. Given the fickle nature of time-travel/time reversal paradoxes, a simple reversal should not be what the MCU plans on delivering in the next Avengers film. But disappointing as it may be, it is one of the possibilities.
In the movie, when Thanos sacrifices the life of his step-daughter Gamora to attain the Soul Stone, there is an obvious aura of grief in the air. Throughout the film, Thanos has been showed aching with regret - after all Gamora was the only person in the universe Thanos truly cared for. There are brief flashes in the film where Thanos seems to be transported into an alternate universe where everything is at peace and he even meets a young Gamora there.
Even when Scarlet Witch kills Vision to destroy the Mind Stone - so that Thanos fails to complete his gauntlet - Thanos is seen engulfed in melancholy and for the briefest of moments empathises with Scarlet Witch for sacrificing a loved one.
It is altogether possible that the completion of his goal - committing genocide to make the universe a better place - would not quench the deep sorrow he feels for his own loss. In that vein, perhaps, Thanos may be motivated to reverse it all, if only just to see his daughter come back to life.
4) None of the dead people - those who faded away - are actually dead. The Soul Stone is a tricky Infinity Stone. A common fan theory that has been floating around since the release, one that is also backed by the comic books, is that those killed by Thanos are still alive, albeit inside a pocket universe that is part of the Soul Stone. This is perhaps the same universe Thanos was transported into when he killed them all, the same place where he sees Gamora.
The possibility of all the Avengers - Winter Soldier, Black Panther, Dr Strange, Spider-Man etc - alive inside a different temporal universe makes it possible for those characters to find a way out from there. More importantly, it may just be Ant-Man and Hawkeye, the two Avengers not present in the film, who hop universes to rescue them. Ant-Man, as is evident from his film, can enter the Quantum Realm. The secret to hopping universes, perhaps, lies there.
5) The least likely scenario - and this is a fan theory that has been floating - is that the X-Men might come into play. While the X-Men are part of the same universe, they have so far never featured in the MCU because of some real world clashes. The X-Men franchise is owned by Fox, where as the MCU is part of Disney. But with Disney in process of acquiring Fox’s assets, this may no longer be a problem.
The theory that’s been making slight waves in Reddit threads and discussion boards is that in the aftermath of Thanos’s attack, a possible chain reaction could lead to the creation of the mutant race. But there are too many technical problems with that. For starters, in the Fox universe, mutants have existed for a very long time. Wolverine, of course, is living proof of that. But a chain reaction may also be one related to a disruption in the time-space continuum; one that leads to the two separate universes merging in somehow, or the mutants being transported to the MCU universe.
Far-fetched? Most definitely.
For now, however, this is all we have left to look forward to.