Who\u2019s going to rescue Iron Man from space? Who got Scott Lang out of the Quantum Realm?<\/b>
\nThe trailer for Avengers 4 \u2014 now officially titled Avengers: Endgame \u2014 arrived on Friday morning, offering a first look at the final chapter of the Avengers cinematic saga and raising a couple big questions in the process.
Unlike Avengers trailers of the past, the Avengers: Endgame trailer does not contain snippets of giant fight scenes, nor do we see our favorite superheroes show off any of their powers. Thanos, the main villain of Avengers: Infinity War, barely makes an appearance outside of one scene where he\u2019s walking through a field.
Instead, we see characters like Captain America and Black Widow mourning their vaporized colleagues and trying to figure out a plan to save the world. There are also moments featuring Hawkeye in a new costume and Nebula looking down and out. (In its own perverse way, it would be hilarious if the fate of the universe somehow came down to Hawkeye.)
But there are individual scenes involving two Avengers \u2014 one with Iron Man being lonely in space, and the other with Ant-Man surprising the remaining members of the team on Earth \u2014 that open the door for a couple of interesting arrivals and wrinkles in the Avengers\u2019 plan to defeat Thanos. Here\u2019s how the new trailer hints at what might play out.
The first part of the Avengers: Endgame trailer finds Iron Man drifting in space and running out of sustenance and oxygen, sort of like The Martian if the Martian were a sad and beat-up Tony Stark.
If you saw Infinity War, you\u2019ll know that there were two factions of superheroes fighting Thanos in two different places: on a planet called Titan, and on Earth in the African nation of Wakanda. Thanos defeated the Avengers on Titan first, after Star-Lord bungled a plan, allowing Thanos to acquire Doctor Strange\u2019s Infinity Stone. Then Thanos moved on to Wakanda, where, after acquiring Vision\u2019s Infinity Stone, he eliminated half the life in the universe with a snap of his chubby purple fingers.
Left behind on Titan with Doctor Strange and Spider-Man, Iron Man watched his two teammates evaporate right in front of him. That\u2019s where this trailer, with Iron Man drifting off and dying \u201calone\u201d (technically, it seems he\u2019s with the cybernetic assassin known as Nebula, which is basically like dying alone), ostensibly picks up.
So Endgame will seemingly begin with Iron Man needing a cosmic rescue. And that sounds like a job for Captain Marvel.
In the post-credits scene for Infinity War, Nick Fury sends a message to Captain Marvel on a device that looks like a sad T-Mobile Sidekick:
Captain Marvel is a space commander who was once, according to the trailers we\u2019ve seen for her upcoming solo movie, part of an elite space force brigade. The device that Fury uses in the Infinity War post-credits scene could be some kind of special gadget that could reach Captain Marvel wherever she may be. Otherwise he\u2019d use a phone or just shoot her a text, right?
With the Guardians of the Galaxy having been dusted by Thanos and the capabilities or limitations of Thor\u2019s Bifrost travel-enabled weapon still unknown, the most logical hero to come zipping through the universe to save Tony (and I guess Nebula) has to be Captain Marvel.
In the post-credits scene of Ant-Man and The Wasp, which came out in July, Scott Lang is off collecting particles in the Quantum Realm \u2014 the dimension he visits by shrinking down to subatomic size \u2014 to help learn and heal his newfound friend Ghost, and probably to further figure out the effects of the Quantum Realm on the original Wasp, a.k.a. Janet Van Dyne.
While he\u2019s in the Quantum Realm, his team in the outside world \u2014 Hank, Janet, and Hope \u2014 gets vaporized by Thanos\u2019s snap.
Yet he somehow appears in the trailer for Endgame, to the surprise of everyone \u2014 the Avengers and audience alike.
It was established in the original Ant-Man movie, as well as in the Ant-Man and the Wasp sequel, that shrinking down and entering the Quantum Realm is very risky. Janet once got stuck there. And getting someone in and out of the dimension has usually required multiple people.
What we know currently is that only a few people knew that Scott was getting lowered into the Quantum Realm at the end of Ant-Man and the Wasp, and that those few people got vaporized by Thanos. Additionally, the number of people who know about the Quantum Realm in the first place, and the number of genius scientists who would be able to access it, are slim.
Minor spoiler alert: Because of Avengers: Endgame set photos in which some of the Avengers have Quantum Realm devices attached to their persons, some fans have started to theorize that the Quantum Realm will function as a means of time travel for the Avengers, perhaps to go back in time to before Thanos snapped.
There\u2019s also a theory circulating that Captain Marvel is not actually in space, but in the Quantum Realm instead, and that she could possibly help Scott Lang and the Avengers defeat Thanos through the realm, by leveraging the realm and its special capabilities.
But for right now, all we know is that Scott most likely needed help to get himself out of the realm before he could show up in the Endgame trailer. So the obvious question is not only who did it, but whether that person could also assist the Avengers, who need all the help they can get.
Now, I\u2019m of the Occam\u2019s Razor belief when it comes to Marvel movies: The easiest explanation is almost always what will happen. To date, Captain Marvel has only been shown in space, and she is a space commander.
And the Quantum Realm has so far only been introduced in the Ant-Man movies. It\u2019d make more sense for Captain Marvel to be zipping around the galaxy, maybe attending to the cosmic crises in Thanos\u2019s warpath or doing other noble deeds instead of floating around the Quantum Realm with giant tardigrades.
Plus, there\u2019s another rumor circulating that Avengers: Endgame actually takes place four years in the future. This rumor is bolstered by casting rumors that Cassie Lang, Scott\u2019s daughter, is actually a teen in the movie. Cassie Lang, in Marvel\u2019s comic books, takes after her father\u2019s superheroics and size-changing abilities, so if that storyline is mirrored in the MCU, she could potentially represent another lifeline for Scott that wouldn\u2019t require Captain Marvel to get involved.
But regardless of who helped Scott get out, his return sparks hope in the Avengers: Endgame trailer, showing the down-and-out duo of Captain America and Black Widow that anything is possible. And that\u2019s important if this team has any hope of defeating Thanos.
Avengers: Endgame is scheduled to open in theaters on April 26,2019.<\/p>\n