By Lucas Greifzu – Staff Reporter

*WARNING: This article does contain spoilers for the first trailer for “Avengers: Endgame” as well as the movie “Avengers: Infinity War.”*

Marvel has set the bar even higher for the final installment of the Avengers series, which closes Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This will likely be the last Marvel movie that advances the timeline for a while. The new Spider-Man movie will likely cover the events of “Infinity War” as well as “Endgame,” and the remaining scheduled Marvel movies have to deal with the X-Men universe. So, they are going to go all out in this movie. If viewers thought that Infinity War was good, then they will love this movie. Prior to “Avengers: Endgame,” the MCU has released 21 different movies over the span of nearly 11 years, and all of which have built up the this massive, explosive conclusion.

This movie is being considered across all fan groups as the conclusion of this phase of the MCU. This could mean a lot of things. A lot of likely theories point to the fact that at least one of the original characters will die in this movie. While others suggest that everyone will die. There are so many theories about this movie that it is very hard to keep up with. The good thing about the amount of hype leading up to this movie is that all of these theories are circulating through all of the fans heads that everyone will want to go just to see what happens. In terms of marketing for this movie the second trailer doesn’t supply a lot of promising information, so it is not going to get talked about in this movie. In order to dissect what will happen in this film, let’s start by doing a quick synopsis of what happened in “Avengers: Infinity War.”

In “Avengers: Infinity War” we have a lingering enemy coming back to face the avengers again. In this film we meet Thanos; the Mad Titan who sent the attack on New York in the original Avengers movie. This time Thanos is taking the fight into his own hands as he sets out to capture all six of the Infinity Stones and place them on his Infinity Gauntlet. There are six Infinity Stones: Reality, Soul, Mind, Time, Space, and Power; each represented by a color: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple, respectively. Each stone has its own set of powers, but with all six stones he can wipe out half of all species on Earth with a snap of his fingers. As one would expect, because this is a two part movie, Thanos does successfully manage to collect all six stones and snap half of the universe out of existence. The total list of characters that died in the movie is: Loki, Heimdall, Gamora, and Vision. The total list of characters who turned to dust at the end of the movie is: Black Panther, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Winter Soldier, Scarlet Witch, Drax, Groot, Star Lord, Mantis, Nick Fury, Maria Hill, Hope and Hank Pym, Janet van Dyne, and Shuri. We also see characters such as Iron Man and Nebula stranded on Titan after their battle with Thanos. Obviously the biggest question heading into “Endgame” is how many of these characters will be brought back.

The trailer for “Endgame” opens up with Tony Stark floating through space in the remains of the Guardian’s ship. He then records a message using his helmet to his fiance Pepper Potts, which basically says that she shouldn’t feel bad about him dying if he does. This is similar to “Iron Man 3” when Tony records a message for Pepper through the Iron Man suit. In the later part of his message he says that the food and water on the ship had run out four days ago, and that the oxygen runs out tomorrow morning. This means that the movie does not take a 10-year jump like a lot of people originally thought it would. This is also consistent with how long it would take for people to start to die of dehydration. He also believes that he has no chance of being rescued, but we can assume that is not how it ends for Stark. Especially given we see him in the second trailer (more on that later).

There are a number of characters that could save him. Captain Marvel being an obvious thought, but there would be no real way for her to know where, or even who, Tony is. There is Thor because his new weapon Stormbreaker has the power of the Bifrost. But again he would not really know where to find him. There are also smaller characters like Karaglen and Valkyrie but the same problems also present there too. Finally, there is Rescue, the name of the character that Pepper becomes when she puts on her own armor. This seems the most likely possibility because she likely has a tracker onto Tony’s suit and the name is mentioned in the trailer. Moving on, Thanos’s armor is hung up like a scarecrow on his new planet called Titan 2. We hear Black Widow say that he did what he set out to do which was that he wiped out 50% of all life. This shows that the remaining heroes are rattled by this because they are all staring at the screen of all the people that are missing and are clearly saddened and beat down about it. The next clip has Captain America saying that they all lost, every single one of them. He also says that each of them lost friends, family, and a part of themselves. This clip also shows that Hawkeye has turned into the dark version of himself that the comic books call Ronin. And it shows him using a blade rather than a bow and arrow. This likely means that similarly to the comic books most, if not all of his family has died in the snap, thus causing him to go dark.

In the next scene they appear to be referencing some huge plan that they need to work. Captain says that he does not know what he will do if it does not work. There are so many potential huge plans that have been talked about by countless people to mention in this article, but we could assume that something huge, and most likely obscure will happen in Endgame. The next clip is the title reveal. The movie being called Endgame could have many implications. First, it was mentioned by Doctor Strange when he said that the characters were,”in the endgame now”. This is because when he looked forward into time at 14,000,605 different timelines and they only won in one of them. So, everything that happened from that moment on was all part of that one timeline that Doctor Strange looked into. In the final clip of the trailer we see Ant-Man outside of the Avengers facility announcing that he is not dead. It also shows that he has the van with the quantum realm device in it. This could be a potential timeline for the upcoming film.

The build up has a lot of positives going for it. For instance, the buildup makes it seem like a big conclusion, which is what this movie is supposed to be. Considering the movie is, as mentioned before, the last MCU movie for a while, this movie needs to be an epic wrap-up to the last 11 years. Knowing the way that “Avengers: Infinity War” left the world half destroyed, “Avengers: Endgame” will undoubtedly reverse this in some way.

Another positive is that it seems like the movie will be less crowded than “Infinity War.” Considering this was a huge problem and it made “Infinity War” hard to follow, this is a very welcome change. The movie will mostly take place on Earth because the vast majority of characters is on Earth. Even though Tony and Nebula are still floating through space the trailers show that they will be returning to Earth at some point in the movie. This leaves Thanos as the only character that is not on Earth. This is not a problem because the battle will just likely take place on Titan 2, which is the planet that Thanos retired to.

There don’t seem to be that many bad points from the marketing for this movie, but there is one really noticeable one. This movie is going to be really stretched out. The current time estimation for “Avengers: Endgame” is just over three hours. Other than the length of the movie, it seems like it will be even better than “Infinity War.”

Rating: 4.75 out of 5 stars