New Avengers Endgame Trailer Details You Missed
With Captain Marvel fresh off its box office-conquering opening weekend, Marvel is already thinking ahead to its next blockbuster and dropping the official trailer for the superhero-infused crossover event of the year. The new Avengers: Endgame clip is nearly two and a half minutes long, stuffed with all sorts of cinematic goodies, and is clearly built to stoke fan anticipation even further.
It takes viewers on a trip through MCU history, shows some long-awaited onscreen combos, and delivers a slew of new details regarding the Avengers, their allies, and how they go about taking down Thanos once and for all. Of course, this being Marvel, every moment has something important to say and comes with the promise of deeper meanings, hidden explanations, and misleading misdirections. Let's break it down and take a look at all the details you missed in the newest Avengers: Endgame footage.
More red
The Avengers: Endgame Super Bowl spot opened on a quick sequence that sped through ten MCU characters, most of whom had died or been snapped in Infinity War. The eye-catching part of the scene: everything was in black and white... and red. The red highlights stood out of each frame, crystal clear and about as cryptic as you can get. In the teaser, though, they were over in a flash.
This time the sequence takes its sweet time, interspersed between other clips, and specifically highlights some new faces including Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Thor, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, and Okoye. No quick flashes this time, either. Interestingly, Falcon and Scarlet Witch have featured in both sequences, but otherwise, the batch of black and white heroes is quite new. While the red could serve as a symbolic message — the color is often connected to blood and death — or may even have something to do with the Reality Stone and its possible involvement in the sequel, the most disquieting thing about this second batch of supers is the alarming number of faces that we know survived the snap, specifically Stark, Cap, and Thor. It's definitely a cause for concern.
Lang readjusts
One of the most exciting moments in the first trailer was the arrival of Scott Lang at the Avengers HQ with his Quantum Van in tow. While the presence of Lang in Endgame is a pleasant if not a particularly surprising revelation, one attention-getting moment occurred when Cap asked Black Widow if the footage of Lang asking to be let in the gate is old. She simply replied that it was filmed at the front door, and many fans seized on the not-quite-answer to suggest that the footage wasn't actually live. The word "Archive" in the upper left corner of the screen also led some to postulate that perhaps the security camera clip was from a different year entirely.
In the new trailer, things seem to point toward a post-snap arrival for Lang. Ant-Man features heavily throughout the trailer, but one scene in particular shows a befuddled Scott looking at a telephone pole plastered with missing person posters. While this could be highlighting a particularly active day for kidnappers, chances are the scene puts Lang firmly after the snap as he starts to piece together what happened.
Where's Nebula?
A quick shot in the trailer shows a very angry Nebula whipping out her swords and making a run at an unseen foe — her papa, perhaps? While the likelihood of Nebula playing a key role in the film is high, especially considering her crucial part in the original Infinity Gauntlet comics event, another interesting thing to notice about the scene is the landscape behind her. The scenery is quite a mess of fire and flame — and even a little reminiscent of the battle on Titan from Infinity War.
Of course, we know from the end of Infinity War that Thanos ends up in an undisclosed location. Some have suggested that his new home could be anywhere from within the Soul Stone to Wakanda itself. However, a clip shown at a Disney shareholders meeting reportedly put the kibosh on any fancy explanation for the Mad Titan's retirement home. Nebula is seen saying she knows where he is and, coupled with an energy signature that's been picked up on out in space, heads off to find him. Could this clip of Nebula on a battle-torn planet actually take place on the long-rumored "Titan 2" that Thanos withdrew to after his work was done?
Back in time?
One of the biggest questions that's swirled since the dust from Infinity War settled was if, how, and when time travel would factor into Avengers: Endgame. Ant-Man and the Wasp explored the potential of the Quantum Realm, opening up the opportunity for that mode of inter-dimensional transportation to come into play in Endgame, especially with Scott Lang trapped there at the end of the film's post-credits scene. Samuel L. Jackson even teased that Captain Marvel would have some time-traveling powers, even if he ended up retracting the statement as a mislead.
Even if Carol Danvers can't time travel, though, it does appear more and more likely that audiences will be pulled around the MCU timeline in Endgame, and the newest trailer seems to have confirmed this to some degree. The Super Bowl spot showed clips of Liberty Island surrounded by apparently abandoned ships as well as Citi Field looking ominously abandoned. The former showed up for a second time in the new trailer, but so did another, more interesting clip. Halfway through, we see a short sequence of the Avengers' ship coming out of the clouds with Tokyo in front of them, lit up from top to bottom. Could this be them celebrating getting the power grid back on post-Decimation, jetting off to pick up Clint Barton, or are we witnessing the crew heading back to the past?
A long-awaited reunion
One of the most glaring things missing from Infinity War was the anxiously anticipated reunion between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers. While the two leaders had technically buried the hatchet thanks to Steve's letter and accompanying emergency cell phone, hurt feelings die hard. We saw it with Stark in Infinity War when he explained to Bruce Banner that calling Cap just wasn't all that easy.
Of course, a Thanos-level apocalypse goes a long way toward helping the reconciliation medicine go down, and we've taken it as a given that once Cap and Iron Man got into the same room together, they'd be able to figure things out one way or another. The bigger question at this point is when in the world — or off of it — that meeting will take place. Writer Stephen McFeely explained that they actually tried to squeeze the reunion in during Infinity War, but it felt out of place. While the new trailer doesn't show the first scene where they set eyes on each other, we do at long last get a glimpse of the two brothers in arms suited up, walking side by side, and man does it feel good. With Tony and Cap together, the world feels a little just a little bit safer again.
New group, new suits, same scene
The new trailer featured a group of heroes walking through the Avengers hangar — a scene reminiscent of The Right Stuff, which happened to also get a shoutout during the Blockbuster scene in Captain Marvel. Eighties references aside, though, if the scene from the trailer felt eerily similar, it's because it was. The Super Bowl spot also ended on a quick tease of a string of heroes walking through the same hangar.
The thing is, each trailer seems to be showing distinctly different groups of people at different times. While the clip that aired during the Big Game kept its distance, it appeared to depict Cap, Thor, Black Widow, Rocket, Ant-Man, Rhodey, and either Bruce Banner or Clint Barton. They also appear to be clothed in their normal getup. This time around the setting remained, but the shot showed Cap, Romanoff, Lang, Banner, and Rhodey — the others were missing, swapped out for Tony Stark and Nebula. All were walking in stride, sporting new suits that look an awful lot like a variation on Ant-Man's or even the space armor that the heroes donned in the cartoons.
What's going on here? Why, with so much story to tease, do we have two nearly identical shots with completely different groups and suits? Are they headed into the Quantum Realm? The cosmos? Are both scenes even going to be in the movie? Neither?
Jumping forward
Speculation regarding when Endgame would take place has been all over the board, with some guesses running upward of five years after Infinity War. While nothing we've seen thus far has seemed to indicate a jump that far into the future, there's no doubt that something is going on with the timeline. About 40 seconds into the trailer we get a clip of Clint Barton with what appears to be his family. The next shot is a repeat from the last trailer, showing a distressed Barton — presumably under the new persona of Ronin — with a completely different haircut.
Then there's Black Widow. Natasha Romanoff ended Infinity War with short blonde hair, but in the trailer she's shown sitting back in a chair, talking to Steve Rogers, with long hair that drapes past her shoulders. Sure, we're talking about superheroes here, but no one's hair grows that much without months and possibly even years going by. Of course, there's also the possibility that she was simply bored after the action settled down, so she went out and got extensions.
Peggy Carter
The callouts to the past came hot and heavy with this one, with Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, in particular, appearing in multiple sequences showcasing key moments of their journeys over the years. Cap's segment even came with a quick little cameo from the same woman that made an ever so brief appearance in the first Endgame trailer: Peggy Carter.
The first trailer had a distinct moment showing Rogers looking at a compass with Carter's picture in it. It was a touching reminder of how far the man has come since the days when he transformed from a scrawny kid desperately trying to go fight for home and country. Although apparently, it wasn't just a callback to an emotional past, because Cap's old flame can be heard in a voiceover during the new trailer too.
As we see a black and white Steve gazing at himself in the recruitment poster, Peg's voice can be heard saying "The world has changed. None of us can go back. All we can do is our best and sometimes the best we can do is to start over." Sound familiar? It's the same line she said as Cap sat by her deathbed in Winter Soldier. Whatever the implications might be, the appearance of Miss Carter is starting to make us wonder how she might fit into the bigger picture.
Whatever it takes
The theme of the first trailer tended to revolve around loss. Not so with the second. This time the whole message can be boiled down to three words: "Whatever it takes." As the group is shown in various capacities preparing to do "whatever it takes," though, there are four people that stand out from the crowd.
A minute and a half into the clip, Captain America says "Whatever it takes." It's a pretty classic Cap line. But then the refrain is taken up by Clint Barton, followed by Natasha Romanoff and finally, after a deliciously pregnant pause, none other than Tony Stark himself. While the mantra seems like a good one for the film, the question is, why do these four say it? Were they just able to pull lines from each character throughout the movie, and no one else happened to say it? Or is there more behind those words?
Both Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. have been rumored to be approaching the end of their time in the MCU, but the thought that four of the original six Avengers are ready to do "whatever it takes" could imply a larger culling than anyone was expecting. Then again, it's a catchy phrase. Maybe the team just likes saying it a lot.
Absentee superpowers
The slo-mo walk through the HQ hangar was dripping with teasers, but the new suits accompanied by the relief of seeing Stark and Nebula rescued from deep space made it easy to miss one of the biggest questions that the scene posed: where were Bruce Banner, Thor, and Carol Danvers? We now know — thanks to that last tag at the end of the new trailer along with the mid-credits scene from her own movie — that Danvers will be joining up with the team, which makes her absence from the hangar scene that much more conspicuous. Does the scene take place before she arrives?
The absence of both Banner and Thor is even more puzzling. Both should be around from the beginning of the film, as they were among the survivors of the snap. We're also still waiting for Hulk's three-movie arc to complete, so he can't just be sent off again in order to sit things out, as he did for Civil War. What about Thor? Asgard is destroyed and he has Stormbreaker, so there's little need to be off elsewhere on his own personal errands at this point. Why are the three most powerful members of the team not present? It seems like a bit of a handicap if the group is going up against Thanos.
War Machine's suit
Another intriguing detail is easy to miss during that hangar walk, and it has to do with an Avenger that typically doesn't get much screen time: Rhodey. Always playing the number two to Tony, Rhodey was nevertheless a solid presence throughout Infinity War, doing everything he could to help keep the enemy contained on the battlefield of Wakanda. In fact, it seemed a shame that it was the sheepish Banner that ended up donning that Hulkbuster armor when the much more experienced Iron Patriot was standing by.
Fans have been looking for a War Machine decked out in Hulkbuster armor ever since it became known that a Hulkbuster War Machine Lego set had been created as part of the film's tie-in merchandise. While it doesn't come across as quite Hulkbuster size, the armor Rhodey is wearing in the clip does appear quite a bit beefier than normal. Besides, it stands to reason that if they're about to head into either the Quantum Realm or space, he would want armor with a fairly manageable size. Whatever the explanation, if it means we finally get to see War Machine in a Hulkbuster suit, that's good enough.