Quick side not before we get into what we know, what we don’t know, and what I hope, Avengers: Endgame, just as good on a second viewing. Also, this post will have spoilers, and some wild guesses that may just end up being right.

Let’s start with what we know:

Movies:
Black Widow – Probably an origin story or at least origin into S.H.I.E.L.D. We got to see the end of her redemption arc in Avengers: Endgame, I suspect we’ll see the start in a Black Widow movie.

The Eternals

Doctor Strange 2 – Facing off against Baron Mordo would make a lot of sense to me for this movie.

Black Panther 2

Shang- Chi – I don’t know anything about this character. I think with Guardians of the Galaxy, before the movie was announced I had heard of them in passing, but haven’t ever heard of Shang-Chi.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 – Or Asgardians of the Galaxy Vol 1. I’m looking forward to this one with Thor on the team.

Shows:
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Wandavision
Loki – Alternative timeline where he’s stolen the Tessaract I’m assuming.
Hulk/She-Hulk
Hawkeye – Rumored at this point in time.

I mention the shows because, while Marvel hasn’t done much to tie in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to the movies, there has been some the other way around, and I think that shows on the Disney+ streaming service are going to tie in a whole lot more.

Out of all of those, I’m really looking forward to Wandavision and Doctor Strange 2. You’ll also notice that I didn’t put in Spider-Man: Far From Home, that’s because it’s technically Phase 3. Not 100% sure how that is going to work, but it’s Spider-Man and I really like Tom Holland as Spider-Man, so I’m excited for it.

What about what we don’t know?

Who will be the New Avengers?
Probably the biggest question, Cap has retired, Tony has died (more on this later). We’re not going to get rid of the Avengers, but who are going to be on the team?

I’m cutting out Thor, even though he is an original Avenger, I think that he’ll be gone for at least an Avengers movie with The Asgardians of the Galaxy Vol 3.

I think we can also write out basically anyone who is having their own show on Disney+ streaming. That would remove Falcon/Captain America, Bucky, Wanda, Hulk, She-Hulk, and Hawkeye.

So who does that leave for a team?

I have:
Falcon – I did say basically anyone from the shows
Black Panther
Wasp
Captain Marvel
Spider-Man – Provisionally, when he has time between classes

And I think we’re going to get a mystery character or two added to the list by the time the next big arc is done. I say mystery character because I’m going to say that we get Wolverine added in at some point in time as we start to add in mutants to the world. I could also see Doctor Strange joining the team at some point in time, and Shuri will probably play a decently large role as well as that Tony Stark kind of character, just not in the fight as much.

You were saying something about Tony Stark?

If you don’t know what the noise was at the end of the credits of Avengers: Endgame, it was the sound of Tony Stark making armor.

There are a lot of rumors of what might be happening because of that, but let’s talk about some of the most popular ones or the ones that I’ve thought of.

First, Tony could come back as an AI. It might cheapen Tony’s death a little bit, but still he’s resting in some ways. I don’t love this one for the reason it does make his death feel less important.

Second one is like the first, there has been in the comics Tony as a hard light hologram. So Tony is back. I think this one is more likely as I think Robert Downey Jr. likes his role as Iron Man and might want to keep it for some more movies and appearances.

Finally, there’s the teenager at Tony’s funeral whom as a fan I didn’t recognize. That teenager is the little kid from Iron Man 3 who helps Tony. Personally, this is my favorite theory, that Tony built him an Iron Man suit and now he’s going to take over as Iron Man. This would be similar to Falcon being the new Captain America. But I like, if they go with this route, that they didn’t hand off both mantles in the same movie. Bring the new Iron Man on later, possibly even in Black Panther 2.

You Mentioned Wolverine, so are we going to get X-Men?

I think the answer to that will be yes, but not as fast as we’ll want. I think we’ll get an end credit scene or two with X-Men in them, teasing at what is to come, but I don’t know that we’ll really get a stand alone X-Men movie until after we have another Avengers movie. I think that will be the direct lead in.

And with that, I think that we also might start seeing them hinted at in the Wandavision show, depending on what they do with that. Though, Wandavision could be a “What if” style show. Marvel likes their “What if” comics. It could be Wanda trying to find a timeline where Vision is still alive.

Infinity Stone still in Vision?

Yeah, let’s talk about the Infinity Stones. Thanos destroyed the stones, right?

I’m not so sure about that. He says that he did, and I’m assuming that he believes he did, but I think it’s more likely that he dispersed the stones. As he said, their atoms are floating around, I believe that was it, or something close. The Infinity Stones are 100% not gone for good though. Not just because of comic book reasons where no one and nothing is every truly gone. But because of what the Ancient One says. Time and reality do not exist without the stones, the universe would have unraveled and been destroyed had Thanos actually destroyed the stones. So it’s certainly possible that we can get Vision back, which I’d completely be up for, because the stone returns.

What Hints might there have been in the movies thus far?

I think there are two pretty large hints that have been dropped. Who knows if they will happen, but I am pretty sure that we know who the next big bad guys are going to be.

The Skrull!

First, you don’t introduce a group of aliens that can shape shift into anyone and a massive bad guys in the comics without plans of using them later.

Next, it also gives an interesting bad guy for Captain Marvel. I’ve complained a fair amount about Captain Marvel being overpowered, and generally she’s been fairly mentally tough as well. I think, because the stone that powered her has been dispersed, see above, that they have an excuse to drop her power levels. But more so than that, it is going to be a villain that would mess with her head, because she saved them before, and now they are invading Earth.

Finally, Thor’s eyes. Wait, what does that even mean? There has been a lot of eye stuff about Thor. First, he loses and eye and has an eye patch, then he gets a new eye, then in Endgame, his mother comments on his eyes. Tie that together with, in Captain Marvel, when Monica Rambeau comments on how pretty the Skrull eyes are. Thor is 100% being swapped out with a Skrull at some time on his space travels. But, won’t it be obvious he doesn’t have mjolnir… oh yeah. Just as an aside, I think this is the reason why they are doing the Asgardians of the Galaxy movie, to get Thor to a spot where he can be swapped out.

This is a slow build to this as well, and why I think for sure we’ll see the X-Men brought in completely before this is done. We’re going to hit a point where there are enough people swapped out, whether we realize it or not, that we need the X-Men to balance the powers that be.

We also might have a hint of an A-Force movie. A-Force is the all female super hero team. While I would be okay with a movie, I actually think this idea would work better as a Disney+ streaming mini-series. I think there’s a good chance it will show up there if Disney+ does well, they just don’t want to announce it yet in case Disney+ bombs (it won’t).

Final hint is tremors in the ocean. Yes, there are things such as earthquakes, but I think this is Marvel saying, Namor is down there. I would not be shocked if we get a Namor movie announced sometime soon with that. Quakes in the ocean have been used in Namor stories before.

But who might some of the lesser bad guys be?

This is really tough. I feel like we’re getting Baron Mordo in Doctor Strange 2. That seems like something that was obviously setup. There are rumors that we’ll get Killmonger back in Black Panther 2, don’t ask me how. It’s comics, so it can work, I guess and Killmonger was the best part of Black Panther. I wonder if we’ll get Hand introduced in Shang-chi. Would make sense to introduce another organization, and it is possible that Hand is highly infiltrated by Skrull if that happens with less Avengers being swapped out.

But who else would make sense? Magneto, obviously, if they jump into X-Men. Doctor Doom would be a great option in my opinion. Possibly introduce him as someone who is an up and coming bad guy or someone who is off to the side in the world before the Fantastic Four are actually brought in. Personally, with the Fantastic Four, I’d prefer to set them in the 1950’s, seems to be the correct time frame for them for some reason, and we have their children who show up in modern times? But I doubt that will happen.

Anyways, I could go on making guesses and I’d eventually get some of them right. But these are some bits of speculation that I have, and some of what I consider the most interesting talking points.

What do you think about them? Are there any that you want to happen or any that you don’t want to happen? What are some that I missed or any ideas that you have that I didn’t come up with?

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I’m now going to write some text so that we don’t get a spoiler in the blurb.

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Nailed it.

So Avengers: Endgame, let’s do a bit of a recap of what happens in this movie. After Infinity War, half of all living creatures in the universe are gone. In space with have Tony Stark and Nebula who aren’t going to make it back to Earth and are floating around in the Benatar. They are conveniently rescued by Captain Marvel who had been sent after them by the Avengers who were still on Earth. Well after Tony. They get back to Earth, find the planet that Thanos is on, and go find him, only to find that he’s destroyed the Infinity Stones with the Infinity Stones. Thor then destroys Thanos.

They go back to Earth and a lot of time passes, five years later. During that time Steve Rogers (Captain America), has started a support group for people and Black Widow is running things from the Avengers base trying to keep the world in some place of stability and find Hawkeye who has gone rogue, because his family died. Scott Lang (Ant-Man) get’s out of the quantum realm and comes up with a vague idea for time travel. Cap, Scott, and Black Widow go to Tony to get his help, but he turns them down, but they don’t realize he’s been working on time travel himself. Instead they get Professor Hulk to help them, and they get some time travel working, but Tony figures it out even more so, and he returns to the Avengers base, so they go back in time to get the time stones. A lot of problems happen in this time, the biggest two being Black Widow sacrifices herself for the Soul Stone, and Nebula is captured by Thanos and the old Nebula goes back with them.

They are able to get the Infinity Stones to work and bring back everyone, but at the same time Nebula brings through Thanos who ship from the past, and a large battle takes place. Thanos isn’t too worried, forgetting that if everyone is back, that means Doctor Strange can bring everyone from Wakanda and around the Universe in. A large battle ensues and Thanos gets the stones back and is about ready to wipe out the universe. But Stark steals the stones, and snap, and Thanos army is gone and Thanos is gone, just like he did to half the creatures, however, that is too much for Tony’s body and he dies as well.

Alright, that’s a very detailed recap, but it hits on a number of things, and some of them that I want to talk about.

First, I love the fact that they gave Nebula a big role to play. Karen Gillan is awesome from Doctor Who, Jumanji, and this, and to see her have a bigger role is great. I also like it because in the comics Nebula is the one who undoes everything that Thanos has done. In that case it’s that she kills her old self who is trying to get the stones for Thanos.

Let’s also get out of the way the one thing that I didn’t like about the film. That was Captain Marvel. Captain Marvel is unfortunately over powered for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She blows up Thanos ship without a scratch. She takes on Thanos while he has all Infinity Stones no problem. She literally has to be sent out to space to get her out of the movie because otherwise she’d be able to do everything too simply. I was hoping that they’d be able to improve upon her from the Captain Marvel movie, but instead they just sent her away instead of trying to undo the DC Movie influence that had been placed upon her character. It sucks because she could have been a cool character, and you can have her still be really powerful, but when she flies through and blows up a ship, have her come out of it looking rough. Have Thanos be able to do some damage to her, he was able to do damage to Hulk, but her able to hold her own. Those are simple ways to keep her power in balance than making her impervious to anything.

But let’s get back to plot stuff that I found interesting.

I’ll also say, I’m going to do an article tomorrow on the original Avengers and how I think they handled their characters from MCU phases one through three, and did we get a good ending for the ones who had their stories wrap up.

Then on Thursday I’m going to go through my Marvel movie rankings and explain why I like the ones I do as much as I do, and why I don’t like the some of them all that well.

Finally, on Friday, it’ll be speculation as to where we go from here.

Anyways, back to the plot. I thought that time travel while unsurprising was an interesting way to go. I also think that that they had the Ancient One explain it differently than Professor Hulk did. When her time stone was taken, that created a diverging timeline that she was going to go on. Hulk says that you can’t change the future, but aren’t a diverging timeline and changing the future basically the same thing? It’s time travel, I shouldn’t think about it so hard, that’s the issue with time travel. It is important to talk about though, because we have multiple diverging points from their actions in the past. Yes, they returned all the Infinity Stones, but Captain America stays in the past with Peggy. That should cause a branching timeline. Loki escapes after the battle in New York after the first Avengers, that is going to create a branching timeline. Really, this opens up the door for Captain America, even though he’s old at the end of the movie to make a cameo as needed and the same with Tony Stark. It also means that Loki can get his Disney+ streaming show.

Let’s also talk about Thanos. Thanos is such a good villain. We got to see them double down on it in this movie by having him try to take a more extreme approach since the first time it didn’t stick. However, with that you see his patience in planning. Thanos just works so well, because you believe that he knows what he is doing is wrong, but he believes it’s the only way. It’s interesting to have a bad guy who is knows they are the bad guy, but thinks what they are doing is right in the long run. My favorite moment for him was after his bombed the Avengers headquarters, him just sitting there and waiting for Nebula to get him the Infinity Stones. He could have rushed in there and smashed everything and taken down people at their weakest while they were disoriented, but that isn’t who Thanos is. He’s calculating, he believes in what he is doing, and he is patient, because as he puts it, “I’m inevitable.”

I also want to give myself a little bit of a pat on the back. In Infinity War, Doctor Strange makes a deal for Tony Stark’s life. That is because Thanos would have killed everyone on Titan who was fighting him, out of spite, had Doctor Strange not done that. Without Tony being around, they wouldn’t have been able to nail down time travel like they did. Them talking about whether or not it was the one early on in the large battle was great as well. Doctor Strange saying that he couldn’t tell Tony because if he knew it would change what he did is great, also tips off that it is the one, but not completely. I feel like Strange would have said that either way, so that Tony still would have had hope. But the moment where Strange raises one finger to Tony and Tony goes for it later in the battle, just letting Tony Stark know at the right time is great. Got chills thinking about it.

I was so surprised that it was Tony who died. Robert Downey Jr. seemed to be having fun with the character, so that I thought that there was a solid chance they’d keep him around for cameos later on. But with how they had Tony Stark die, and Pepper Pott’s line that he could finally rest, that was just beautiful. We got to have the Peter Parker moment with Tony, but then Pott’s really giving Tony the sendoff that he deserved. He’s been trying so hard to save everyone, and he finally did it. I had thought it would be Captain America, another character who had been given somewhat of an arc, but didn’t seem to have much more for him to do. Also, Cap is just such a candidate for a heroic death from how they created his personality. I think his actual end, spending away his days with Peggy was fitting. Oh, and if you are wondering, when we see old Cap, he’s probably 110 or so, and looking like he’s 80, so yes, he ages slower which makes sense for his super soldierness.

Let’s now talk a little bit about fat Thor. This was somewhat controversial to have Thor fat on several online sources claiming it was fatphobia/fat shaming. I don’t have an issue with it for several reasons that I’ll lay out here. First, and most importantly, Thor isn’t weaker because he’s fat. Thor is able to fight just as well as when he was strong when he is fat. Endgame is telling you, even if you are larger, you are still a strong person who can do important things. Next, Thor has gone through so much. Yes, Chris Hemsworth can pull off that comedy of being The Big Lebowski, but consider everything Thor has gone through. He lost so many Asgardians in Thor Ragnorak. It wasn’t just the snap, there were thousands who died in Ragnorak. There were many more who died in Thanos attack on the ship to get the Infinity Stone, then there is the snap that takes out even more, and more people who he knows. Thor has lost more than anyone else, and he’s the God of Thunder and believes he should have been able to stop Thanos. My only issue with it is that I had a very obnoxious movie goer behind me whom every time Thor was going to show up on the screen, wondered out loud if Thor was still going to be fat and then laughed when he was, thinking that the fatness was a joke. So it isn’t how Marvel handled it that was an issue, it was an issue, however, for that fan themselves. Marvel handled it tastefully, and how a person handles it, we can’t control that.

There are a lot more things to talk about, but I am going to leave them some for the future articles. This movie was such a home run for me, and clearly I have even more to say on it. Feel free to post spoilers in comments, questions, issues, what you loved, this is the spoiler post.

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