As crushed as many of us were by the ending of Avengers: Infinity War, it was always pretty obvious that we haven’t seen the last of all the heroes who turned to dust before our eyes. Surely the MCU hasn’t dropped Black Panther after just one hugely successful solo outing. And doesn’t Tom Holland already have another Spider-Man film planned?
While time travel remains by far the most prominent theory on how Avengers 4 is going to dig some of the franchise’s most cherished characters out of the hole dug by Infinity War, one user on Reddit has an alternative idea that would see the Marvel universe branch into two – which is pretty intriguing.
Here’s how he explains it:
Everyone who got dusted in Infinity War is still alive…in a separate universe.
Everything we see after the snap is Universe A, as Cap, Iron Man, Thor and pals watch half the people in the universe disappear. Thanos has rid the world of half of all life and he retires to his little dairy farm or whatever.
For the most part, the folks who get dusted don’t seem to be in any pain — and that’s because they’re not dying, they’re shifting to Universe B. Like Thanos’ Universe A, this second reality is missing half of all life — it’s just the other half.
User HordeOfTheDance goes on to speculate on how the story could subsequently unfold in ‘Universe B,’ before musing on the effect this would have on future projects.
In Universe B, Doc Strange gets Spider-Man off Titan and then goes off all scowly and sad to try and figure out how to rejoin the two universes. My bet is that Captain Marvel plays a big role in bringing the timelines back together, whichever side of reality she ends up on.
From a production standpoint, this allows characters like Black Panther and Spider-Man to have post-Infinity War sequels without having to be “resurrected” somehow: They’re alive and well, just in a world without Thanos and the major Avengers. Same applies to the TV shows: Daredevil, Jessica Jones etc are in Universe B, along with the agents of Shield (including Maria Hill and Nick Fury).
Regardless of how much credence you feel there is to the claim, you could certainly make the case that this direction would show a greater commitment to the huge changes implied by the end of Infinity War. After all, time travel is a pretty difficult twist to pull off without making the audience feel at least a little cheated, with even a classic like the 1978 Superman still drawing derision for pulling the same trick at its climax.
In any case, Avengers 4 will arrive next May and hopefully, it’ll bring the answers we so crave. Until then, though, feel free to speculate with us in the comments section down below.