All of Our Theories for ‘Avengers: Endgame’

Back before Avengers: Infinity War hit theaters, we wrote down all of our theories about what might happen in the movie. Our predictions were based on the previous films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, our knowledge of the comics, our understanding of storytelling conventions, and, let’s face it, a dash of wishful thinking. Ultimately, while we definitely weren’t right in all of our predictions, we still did pretty well, with many of our theories proving to be at least partially correct.

So of course, we’re doing it again for Avengers: Endgame, the twenty-second film in the MCU and the culmination of eleven years of cinematic storytelling.

As with our Infinity War predictions, our theories are based on official trailers and promotional material, official interviews with the cast and production team, social media posts by members of the cast and the directors, our familiarity with the comics, and the boundless limits of our own imaginations.

They are not based on spoiler sites, spoiler photos, rumors, unofficial film footage, set leaks, or anything else that has not been officially released by the film’s cast, directors, producers, or marketing team. We are all about combing every inch of the promotional campaign for details, but try to actively avoid digging up details that the people who made the film don’t want us to have.

For the record, these are just our best guesses, and may be completely wrong – but they could also contain massive spoilers, so proceed at your own risk.

Where we are in the story

Following Infinity War, Lauren wrote a post on how the MCU as a whole (and the individual films within it) seems to be following a Shakespearean five-act storytelling structure, with Infinity War functioning as the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ for the franchise. As she explained it then, this is a storytelling ‘beat,’ or narrative landmark, in which “the protagonists have lost everything, the antagonist appears to have won, and all hope feels lost.” It comes at the end of the fourth act, setting up the fifth act, or Resolution, “in which ultimate lessons are learned, seemingly insurmountable obstacles are overcome, and the characters, galvanized by their trials, emerge permanently changed.”

Broadly speaking, that’s what we expect from Avengers: Endgame. While the film should obviously have its own internal narrative arc, the movie as a whole will likely serve as the Resolution for the first three phases of the MCU, completing the character journeys of the six original Avengers and wrapping up the story for that particular team in a satisfying and definitive way (while still, of course, leaving the door open for a new team to take their place).

Scott Lang/Ant-Man

It may seem a little weird to kick off our theories post with a character who wasn’t even in Infinity War, but we believe that despite his absence from the first movie, Scott is going to be pretty crucial to the events of the second one. As you know if you watched Ant-Man and the Wasp (which you really should, if you haven’t), it’s revealed during the end credits that the whole film takes place during the events of Infinity War. At the end of the film, Scott goes into the Quantum Realm to harvest quantum energy while Hope, Hank, and Janet monitor him from the outside, preparing to bring him back out — but before they can, the Snap occurs, and all three of them are turned to dust, leaving Scott stranded inside the Quantum Realm.

How is this relevant to Endgame? Well, before Scott enters the Quantum Realm, Janet warns him not to “get sucked into a time vortex.” While she never gets a chance to elaborate on what exactly a “time vortex” is, we suspect that’ll become a huge plot point in Endgame, once Scott gets out of the Quantum Realm, and will likely be the piece of information that spurs the Avengers out of grief and back into action.

As for how he gets out of the Quantum Realm… well, we’re not entirely sure, but we’ve come up with at least one theory we like. The trailers indicate a significant time jump, and a teenage version of Scott’s daughter, Cassie, is included in the cast list, so we think it would be great if Cassie was the one to pull him out. No matter how Scott manages to escape, though, we’re pretty certain he’s stuck in there for a good long while — think years, not months. The first trailer seems to imply that he shows up at Avengers headquarters shortly after the Snap, but we’re pretty sure these trailers are intentionally cut to throw us off the scent, so we’re taking nothing at face value.   

Doctor Strange

“Uh, didn’t Doctor Strange die? What on earth is he doing in this theories post?”

Great question, gentle reader! While we realize that Doctor Strange is now as dusty as a Buffy the Vampire Slayer vampire, we think he may still have a big role to play in Endgame. You see, before Tony & co. initiated their ill-fated final plan in Infinity War, Strange used the Time Stone to browse through 14,000,605 possible timelines, and came away having found only one in which the good guys win.

Later, after he’s offered up the Time Stone to Thanos and a horrified Tony Stark asks, “Why would you do that?” Strange replies, “We’re in the endgame now.” Then, after the Avengers lose their battle on Earth, Strange’s last words are, “There was no other way.”

The thing to keep in mind throughout all of this is that everything that Strange does after peering into the future is orchestrated specifically to navigate to that solitary scenario where they win. That includes attempting to pry the Infinity Gauntlet off of Thanos’ hand, projecting a hundred different versions of himself in an effort to bind Thanos with magic, and, yes, giving up the Time Stone.

Strange knows he’s going to die. And he knows that after he’s dead, everything still has to happen just so in order for the Avengers to win. So if you’re a wizard who’s about to give up his Time Stone, knows he’s going to die, knows he has to somehow nudge the events following his death onto a very specific, very narrow path, and knows how to astral project… what do you do?

Specifically, what do you do during the two minutes you’re not on screen before giving up the Time Stone, when no one is paying any attention to you?

You leave some instructions behind.

Our theory is that while Thanos was busy skewering Tony like a chrome-plated kabob, Strange used the Time Stone one last time in order to stretch out those two minutes and leave some important pieces of information with the one person who wouldn’t question Strange’s astral-projected form showing up unannounced to infodump about the future: Wong.

Wong has been curiously absent from the Endgame trailers, and we suspect it’s because his scenes are super spoilery. If we’re right, Wong is in possession of some vital pieces of the puzzle, but can only parcel them out at very specific times in order for the timeline to remain on its one-in-fourteen-million path. We know from Doctor Strange that Sorcerers can stretch out a single moment in order to have a whole rambling conversation, but given Strange’s exacting personality, we expect he gave Wong only what he absolutely needed to keep the Avengers on track, and didn’t muddy the waters with pesky things like nuance. So although Wong likely has some game-changing pieces of knowledge, he may not actually know what they mean until later on in the story.

Whatever nuggets of knowledge Strange left behind is anyone’s guess — perhaps he told Wong about Scott stuck in the Quantum Realm (sidebar: we suspect one of the reasons Strange played along with so many failed attempts to get the Gauntlet in the first place was precisely because he wanted to allow Scott enough time to enter the Quantum Realm, although we’re not convinced we’ll ever get explicit confirmation of that), or about the importance of Carol Danvers, or about how to get everyone out of the Soul Stone — but remember that just because the Avengers are “in the endgame now” doesn’t mean they won’t seem to lose before they ultimately win.

So, what’s the plan?

From the trailers, it looks like the first thing the surviving Earth-bound Avengers are going to try is to use the Guardians’ ship (which means that Tony and Nebula manage to make it all the way back to Earth, somehow) to seek out Thanos and try to force him to undo the Snap, bringing back their friends from the dead. If this plan sounds desperate and doomed, that’s because we’re pretty sure it is. Not just because their numbers have been reduced by half, or because they have absolutely zero leverage over Thanos, but because there’s no way, in a three-hour movie, that the first plan actually works.

That shot in the trailer of Tony, Steve, and Thor walking side by side to confront Thanos? We’re almost positive it ends in defeat and disappointment, and takes place pretty early into the movie. They’ve tried punching Thanos into submission, and it failed abysmally. Trying it again isn’t going to improve matters.

Whatever the “endgame” is that Strange foresaw, we doubt it’s going to involve overpowering Thanos with brute strength. The Avengers may be physically imposing, but we expect Endgame to be much more of a chess match than a brawl, and for the ultimate victory to be one of intelligence, sacrifice, and love rather than might.  

Time travel?

While we do think that time travel is going to factor into the events of Endgame, we do not subscribe to the theory that the Avengers will actually be able to use time travel to completely undo the events of Infinity War. No, we don’t think the characters who died in the Snap are staying dead, but we also don’t think it makes sense to set a precedent of one movie being able to completely negate the development of a previous movie. That would significantly lower the stakes for every MCU movie going forward, and we don’t see Marvel falling into that trap. So no matter what happens in Endgame, Infinity War still needs to have lasting consequences.

That said, we won’t rule out that the Avengers may try to use time travel to make it so the Snap never happened. We just don’t think they’ll succeed. If they do attempt to mulligan the Battle of Wakanda, we doubt that’ll be their only time travel destination, as we also expect that at least the original six Avengers will head back to the Battle of New York.  

As for how the time travel will happen, there’s a shot in the trailer of most of the surviving characters walking through a hangar in matching white suits. Given the state of the world after Infinity War, why spend valuable time and resources constructing shiny new suits for the entire team, unless they serve some sort of important purpose like, say… entering the Quantum Realm? It doesn’t make sense that they’d be for space travel; characters have traveled into space plenty in the MCU without needing actual space suits. Plus that doesn’t account for a character like Nebula, who is a cyborg, needing to wear a suit. But if they’re entering the Quantum Realm, they’d all need special suits, which we’re guessing Tony reverse-engineered (obviously, with a few Starkian improvements) from the Pymtech in Scott’s suit.

The Avengers

While Endgame needs to work as a send-off for several original Avengers whose contracts are up, most notably Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark and Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers, it also needs to function as a farewell to the original team who first assembled in 2012’s The Avengers. Obviously, the individual characters will get their own arcs wrapped up, but the team has been a character in its own right, with its own arc.

In her book Creating Character Arcs, K.M. Weiland talks about “The Lie the Character Believes.” This is a misconception the character holds about themselves that keep them from being able to achieve their goal. Victory can only be achieved when the character is able to overcome this Lie and embrace a deeper truth.

Each of the Avengers has been dealing with their own Lie since their first introduction into the MCU, all of which will need to be addressed and resolved before their final exit, but it makes sense that the Avengers as a whole would also have a Lie that must be dealt with before they can win. We believe that The Lie the Team Believes is simple: They believe that their extraordinary abilities are what makes them heroes.

Back in 2012, Nick Fury said that the Avengers were formed “to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles we never could.” Both the audience and the characters themselves have always assumed that what makes them “remarkable” are their abilities, but note that Fury never actually mentioned powers.

The Avengers have been working together on and off for nearly a decade now, and their relationships have definitely evolved and deepened during that time, but each of them still believes that the most important thing they bring to the table is a particular skill set. We predict that in Endgame, the core group of Avengers will need to realize that they are remarkable not because of what they can do, but because of who they are. Their strength is not necessarily found in powers and skills, but in each other.  

Tony Stark/Iron Man

It all started with Tony, so it’s only fitting that he’ll play a major role in how it all ends. While there has been rampant speculation that the events of Endgame will culminate in Tony’s death, we are pretty sure that after completing this final mission, he’s going to choose to walk away from the Avengers to start a family with Pepper (who we’re preeeetty sure will be pregnant by the end of the movie, if she isn’t already).

Of course, right now Tony is adrift in space, and if the first trailer is to be believed, running on fumes while still millions of miles away from Earth. However, the trailers also seem to indicate that, against all odds, he somehow makes it back alive. This one honestly has us stumped; we haven’t been able to come up with a solid theory for how he and Nebula make it back before Tony’s life support runs out. We’ve discussed Carol giving them a tow, Valkyrie scooping them up, and a team from Earth going to pick them up, but none of those theories fully gel with what we already know — they either seem too coincidental or too logistically prohibitive to feel plausible. So on this front, Marvel is going to have to surprise us.

Once he’s reunited with the rest of the Avengers, though, we expect Tony to be the one who reverse engineers the Quantum Realm suits from Scott’s Ant-Man suit (preferably with a built-in “return” button, so that getting stuck in the Quantum Realm for years is no longer a possibility). He’s also sure to be one of the masterminds of the ultimate plan, which will almost definitely involve him and Steve not only working together, but trusting one another again, mending the rift between them that started in Captain America: Civil War. We don’t know how the Avengers are going to manage to beat Thanos, but we’re positive it has to be as one united team, not a bunch of splintered groups.

After the dust has settled, we think we’ll see Tony and Pepper finally getting married, and then Tony walking away from both the Avengers and Stark Industries to live a quiet life off the grid with his family. Tony has always been living under the shadow of Howard Stark’s legacy, so we can think of no more fitting ending for him than to decide to trust someone else with saving the world, and for him to focus on being the best husband and father he can be.

Steve Rogers/Captain America

Of all the original six, Steve’s arc is the one that has been the most visible throughout the Avengers movies. Back in 2012, Avengers picked up practically where Captain America: The First Avenger left off, with Steve catapulted decades into the future and unsure of his place in this new century. Ever the soldier, he eventually found a new version of home with his team, stepping up to lead the Avengers at the end of Age of Ultron, but he’s always remained slightly out of time.

Steve’s arc began with self-sacrifice; he flew his plane (and the Tesseract) into the sea to save humanity, but even before he got his powers, his selflessness was one of his defining characteristics. Remember the time a scrawny pre-serum Steve threw himself on what he thought was a live grenade in order to save a bunch of guys he didn’t even like? Steve Rogers had a heroic spirit long before his body caught up, and we believe that inclination to throw himself into harm’s way for the good of others will be on full display in Endgame.

Infinity War reintroduced Red Skull as the guardian of the Soul Stone. We firmly believe that this was a deliberate choice, meant to call back to the self-sacrificial themes of Captain America: The First Avenger (especially since bringing back Red Skull is a weird choice when you can’t even get Hugo Weaving to return).

In the comics, the souls of those who were snapped away by Thanos were contained in essentially a “Soul Stone dimension,” which meant they could still ultimately be saved. We’re pretty sure that the Avengers will somehow uncover this piece of information, and will find themselves facing the same sacrificial requirement that caused Thanos to murder Gamora.

However, we are all three firm believers that Thanos’s sacrifice of Gamora in Infinity War was a twisted bare-minimum fulfillment of what the Soul Stone required (none of us believe that Thanos truly understands love or even Gamora; it’s telling that he only ever pictures her as the child that trusted him, and not as the adult woman who fought him), and that it is highly likely that his forced claim upon the Soul Stone only gave him a fraction of the power that a true, loving sacrifice would unlock.

This is where Steve’s self-sacrificial nature comes in. This is the character who tried every trick in the book to get into the army so he could fight against an oppressive tyrant, who ventured alone into enemy territory to save soldiers that everyone else had already given up for dead, and who decided to go down with a crashing helicarrier to prevent a deadly assassin from carrying out a terrorist act. Throughout Infinity War, there are numerous conversations about whether the sacrifice of a single person is an acceptable price to pay for the safety of many. We are convinced that this all leads to Steve making the ultimate decision to sacrifice himself to get everyone out of the Soul Stone, and that his sacrifice, given freely and lovingly, will unlock the Soul Stone’s full potential, revealing far more power than Thanos was ever able to wield.

We also believe that, once he has entered the Soul Stone, he will somehow reunite with Peggy Carter, and finally get his happily ever after. No matter how long Steve has been out of the ice, he’s always loved Peggy, even after she died. It’s evident in the way that he carries her photo as a talisman, in the way he sat by her bedside as her health deteriorated, and in the way that he never really seemed interested in moving on from her, no matter how many valiant attempts Natasha made to set him up on dates. We can’t picture a more satisfying ending for him than finally meeting her for that date they planned all those years ago.

Thor

Thor’s entire story arc throughout the course of the MCU has revolved around his becoming the man he needs to be, in order to be an effective leader for Asgard — only to have it all stripped away. We have watched him become worthy to wield Mjolnir, and then worthy to take up his father’s mantle, and we have even watched him shrug away the need to for outside validation of his strength or his abilities altogether, seeing him unlock his Thunder God powers and craft his own bifrost-summoning axe. But we have also watched him get stripped of everything worth fighting for, piece by piece, forced to stand by helplessly as Thanos destroyed his people, his best friend, and his brother.

We’re pretty convinced that by the end of Endgame, Thor will be king of a new version of Asgard, finally embracing the destiny he’s been chasing for so long. While we aren’t sure just how much of Thanos’s destruction will be undone, we believe Asgard will be either restored, relocated, or salvaged in some meaningful way, and that those Asgardians who survived the Snap (or are restored by whatever the Avengers manage to pull off) will have a place to go. We also believe that this time, Thor will fully commit to ruling Asgard, and will retire from the Avengers in order to focus on building a safe and vibrant home for his people.

And while it’s pretty unlikely, given that we haven’t seen much of Jaimie Alexander in the MCU for a long time, Teija at least is still holding out an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny glimmer of hope that when all is said and done, Lady Sif might make one last appearance to rule beside him.

Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow

Natasha has been all over the trailers, and it’s honestly her hair that’s provided us with the most clues as to how much time is going to pass during the course of Endgame. We first see her wearing the sporty platinum bob she was rocking in Avengers: Infinity War, but as more trailers have dropped we’ve seen her hair grow longer and eventually return to its natural shade of red, albeit with blonde ends.

Now, as anyone who has suffered the pain of growing out a bob knows all too well, growing your hair out is not an easy process. In fact, it can take years to get to the point where it’s long enough to French braid, which means that the movie is likely to span a good five or six years, with some jumps in time moving us back and forth.

As to what Nat’s actually up to in the movie? We don’t have a lot of theories on that beyond the obvious, that she’s the one who tracks down Clint and brings him back to help take down Thanos once and for all. That’s not to say that Natasha’s not important, but just that her role in this movie is not as clear as the others.

Clint Barton/Hawkeye

Clint’s taking up the Ronin mantle in Endgame seems to indicate that he’ll be the Avenger who has lost the most. In the comics, Clint first took on the guise of Ronin during the aftermath of Civil War; however, in Endgame, we think it will be witnessing his family get Snapped away that pushes the archer to his breaking point.

We all think that Clint has started giving archery lessons as a way to keep busy in his post-Avengers retirement, but the scene from the trailer where we see him standing next to a young girl holding a bow has us divided. We all think that the figures in the background are his wife and kids, but Teija and Sarah firmly believe that the young girl we see him training is the daughter we first met in Age of Ultron, while Lauren suspects that she’s simply a student (and is not ruling out the possibility that she’s a young Kate Bishop), since her age doesn’t seem to match up with the pint-sized actress we saw in Ultron.

However, we are all in agreement that this scene probably ends with Clint being forced to watch his entire family fade into dust while he stands by, utterly helpless. Which, coincidentally, is the moment we think he’ll start down his path of revenge that eventually leads him to take on the Ronin persona.

What we’d really love to see here is Clint picking up a few strays along the way, possibly even taking care of Cassie Lang after her mom and step-dad are dusted, and potentially finding a new protegee in the form of Kate Bishop. And with the news of a new Hawkeye show launching on Disney+, there’s an even better chance that we’ll see Kate at least make a cameo appearance in Endgame to set the stage for the show.

Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (and Nick Fury)

After seeing Carol give Nick Fury the souped-up Kree pager in Captain Marvel, there’s been one question on everyone’s minds: Why on earth did he wait twenty-five years to call for help? We think that this is where time travel will have a significant impact on the events of the movie. We’ve established that we don’t think it’s wise for our heroes to be able to completely undo the events of Infinity War, which means that the time travel rules they’ll be working with in Endgame will most likely state that what’s already happened has to happen. Which means that no matter what, Carol can’t show up until after the Snap.

Knowing that Nick Fury had quite the ace up his sleeve with Carol Danvers, it’s surprising that he didn’t call her in when Loki first appeared on Earth and the Chitauri poured out of a portal over Manhattan. We think that the reason Fury didn’t call her in, is because he was given explicit instructions not to use the pager at any point during the events of Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, or Avengers: Age of Ultron — by one of the time-traveling Avengers. They may not be able to change the past, but they can ensure that all the pieces are placed according to Strange’s instructions by telling Fury precisely when and where he needs to activate the pager in order to finally call Carol back.

This would explain why, after 25 years of not using it even in the most dire of circumstances, Fury doesn’t hesitate to go for the pager as soon as he sees people begin to disappear. It would also explain why, as he begins to turn to dust, his reaction doesn’t seem to be one of fear or even confusion, but annoyance. He’s known all along that this was coming; he just was holding out a shred of hope that maybe the Avengers were wrong and he actually did survive the Snap. Sorry, Fury.

Of course, this begs the question, what’s the big deal about Carol? Sure, she can blast photons from her hands and fly and punch really hard, but she’s hardly the only one on the team with that particular skill set. So what does she bring to the table that might actually make a difference?

We believe it boils down to how she got her powers in the first place — from the Tesseract, a.k.a. the Space Stone. The MCU has had several characters who were powered by or could wield Infinity Stones — Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, Vision, Doctor Strange, Peter Quill — but they’re all dead now. The only one left is Captain Marvel, and we believe that detail is going to be crucial. Maybe she’s the only one who can destroy the Stones, maybe she’s got some sort of internal link to the Stones, or maybe it’s some other Stone-related possibility we haven’t considered, but no matter what role Carol Danvers plays in Endgame, we’re pretty sure it will come back to the Stones.

Just, don’t ask us what Carol’s been up to since the mid-‘90s. We honestly have no idea.

Young Avengers

Avengers: Endgame not only has to provide a successful conclusion to the first ten years of the MCU, but also lay the groundwork for what the next ten years will look like. Given that a teenage Cassie Lang and a teenage Harley from Iron Man 3 are both listed in the credits, in addition to Kat Langford in an unspecified role that we suspect may end up being Kate Bishop, we’re willing to bet that they are setting the stage for the Young Avengers to eventually make their debut in the MCU.

However, we don’t think that these characters will have major roles to play, with the possible exception of Cassie assisting her dad in escaping the Quantum Realm.

Reality Reset

Since we’re sure that the team won’t be able to completely undo the events of Infinity War in Endgame, we believe there’s a good chance that there will be a reality shift by the end of this movie. Between the unexpected ramifications of time travel and the possibilities opened up by the Infinity Stones, we suspect that the reality of Phase Four and beyond won’t be the exact same one that the first three Phrases existed in.

In our predictions post for Infinity War, we talked about how Scarlet Witch is actually the Avengers’ heaviest hitter. However, while we were off on our predictions for her role in that movie (given that we vastly underestimated just how dark Marvel Studios was willing to go), we’re still holding on to the idea that once Wanda is restored, she will play a large part in this reality reset. There’s plenty of precedent in the comics to show that Wanda is more than capable of manipulating and changing reality, so it won’t be a surprise to see her make use of that ability in the MCU.

A reality shift would allow for some changes to continuity as well as the opportunity to reset anything that doesn’t work for the story going into Phase Four. Not to mention it gives the franchise a solid way to write out all of the Phase 1 actors whose contracts are up after Endgame without turning it into the massive bloodbath so many are predicting it will be. As a storytelling device, it’s a solid one that would provide a distinct break between Endgame and what comes next.

The Infinity Stones

What happens to the Stones after the Avengers ultimately save the day? We’re a bit on the fence here.

On the one hand, Infinity War established that Wanda was the only one strong enough to destroy an Infinity Stone, possibly because her powers come from one. Following this same logic, we’re pretty sure that Captain Marvel joins Wanda in the “can break the Stones” club. But even knowing that they may have the ability to destroy them, we’re not entirely sure they’ll do it.

We’re divided on whether Doctor Strange would allow the Time Stone to be destroyed, but more importantly, if our theory holds true and the movie ends with Steve Rogers’ soul inside the Soul Stone, we can’t see the Avengers destroying it. Further, Vision uses the Mind Stone essentially as a battery. While Shuri mapped his connections and it’s possible that he can live without it (in the comics, he has a solar crystal there, not an Infinity Stone, so it doesn’t have to be one), it’s likely that they leave the Stone in his forehead, returning him to the way he was pre-Snap.

However, if the Avengers don’t see a use for the remaining Stones, or collectively decide that they’re too powerful to be allowed to exist, we could see them destroying some or all of them, and removing the possibility of anyone ever amassing the immense power of all the stones combined, ever again.

Alternately, it’s possible that they’ll split the Stones among several different realities, making it near impossible for anyone to ever obtain them all at once, but still keeping them intact.

And then here’s a wild (if improbable) thought: what if they can give Steve the Stones before he goes into the Soul Stone? Can we put an Infinity Stone inside another Infinity Stone? Now there’s an idea.

What We (Probably) Won’t See

Quicksilver

Despite the wishes of a rather vocal part of the fandom, it’s highly unlikely that any reset or alternate reality that comes out of the events of Endgame will bring Quicksilver back from the dead. While Aaron Taylor-Johnson has said he’d be willing to reprise his role (despite some reports that he only agreed to Ultron in the first place because he knew it would be a one-and-done deal), it feels like the ship has sailed on Quicksilver. We expect a lot of characters to come back from the dead in Endgame, but he’s not one of them.

The X-Men or the Fantastic Four

Just because the Disney-Fox merger was finalized before Endgame hit theaters, don’t hold your breath on seeing any of your favorite Fox-owned characters pop up in the movie. Filming for Endgame wrapped long before the ink on the merger was dry, so there was no opportunity for the Russos to add any of the members of the X-Men or the Fantastic Four. Odds are that we won’t see any of these named characters until at least Phase 4 of the MCU, which Feige has confirmed will start in 2020.

However, there’s always a chance that we will get an oblique reference to either the X-Men or the Fantastic Four — one that doesn’t require any casting, and could’ve been filmed on the cheap — as a stinger.

Loki’s Resurrection

We know, we know. Loki has cheated death more times than anyone else in the MCU so it stands to reason that a large percentage of the fandom is holding out hope that he’ll find a way out of it once again. Unfortunately, this just doesn’t seem likely. While we are positive that the dusted heroes will make their return, any of the deaths that happened pre-dusting and without a direct link to an Infinity Stone are most likely permanent.

However, that doesn’t rule out that we’ll see Loki in some other form in Endgame. With all the potential for time travel and reality resets, we wouldn’t be surprised if the film figures out a sneaky way to make Loki’s sacrifice count while still working him in somehow. After all, Loki is getting a show on Disney+ and his shadow is in the ‘Whatever It Takes’ poster, so it seems likely that he’ll have some sort of presence in Endgame, even if the version of him that died in Infinity War stays dead.

What We Don’t Know

Despite spending the better part of the last year discussing, theorizing, and speculating on what will happen in Avengers: Endgame, there are still plenty of things we are unclear on. Honestly, that’s fine by us, since we’re excited to see the movie and watch the story unfold without knowing exactly how it happens. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t a tad bit annoyed that some things are apparently beyond our ability to theorize.

For instance, what is Okoye’s role? She’s clearly a major player, showing up prominently in marketing material, on the press tour, and featured heavily on all of the posters. Yet, we’ve only seen a glimpse of her in the trailers, and nothing that so much as hinted what she’s up to.

Will we see inside the Soul Stone? We have no doubts that the heroes who were dusted are alive in some fashion and trapped in the Soul World, but will we get to see this for ourselves? And if we don’t see this in Endgame, is it possible we’ll see flashbacks to the Soul World in future movies?

And most importantly, will Alan Silvestri finally give us an Avengers score that effectively utilizes all of the MCU’s individual character themes?

We don’t know, but we can’t wait to find out.

Want more of our thoughts leading up to Avengers: Endgame? Check out our post on If ‘Avengers: Endgame’ Let Us Write the Post-Credits Scenes!