Hey, remember when Marvel Studios lied to us? Specifically, we’re referring to the early trailers for Avengers: Infinity War, which we later found to contain a few misleading differences from the film that these clips were advertising. But while the Russo Brothers have since come out and admitted that such altered content as the battle-ready Hulk were deliberately included to throw fans off their trail, this new Reddit theory suggests that the directing pair could be deceiving us once more, with the seemingly fraudulent trailer footage actually teasing what’s to come in Avengers 4.
User Barbarian5867’s post includes a link to the Infinity War trailer released last March, asking viewers to pause at 01:45. If you do so, you’ll find the famous image of Captain America struggling to hold off the big purple hand of the Mad Titan, who by then had acquired all of the Infinity Stones but one, the Mind Stone. However, in this particular trailer, you’ll notice that the Reality and Soul Stones are also missing from the Infinity Gauntlet.
This, the Redditor argues, suggests that time travel will allow Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to journey back and obtain these two stones before Thanos succeeds in his quest. Barbarian5867 goes on to speculate on how the team could acquire these precious MacGuffins, starting with the Reality Stone.
“Remember when Tony presented this self-therapy technology with both of his parents, and that the Russos said that this technology will come in hand[y] in Avengers 4? My guess on this part is that Tony will obtain the reality stone from the collector before Thanos can get his purple fingers on it, and he will combine both of his [artificial] reality with the reality stone for.. well, I don´t know, and I guess that´s a big part of the plot for Avengers 4.”
As for the Soul Stone, the user has some unconventional, and surprisingly dark solutions.
“We have learned that, in order to obtain it, you have to sacrifice something you love. So maybe in Avengers 4, Gamorrha is still alive, and has now to be sacrificed by Starlord so that he can obtain the Soul stone? Or maybe.. Banner has to sacrifice the Hulk, as they both have a love-hate relationship? Maybe the Hulks gets sacrificed, but just so that Banner morphs into Doctor Hulk? Or even better, each Banner and Hulk sacrifice parts from each other so that Banner/Hulk can morph into Doctor Hulk, thus obtaining the soul stone in that process? That´s also why we see the Hulk in his typical form charging (in the official trailer), because he is just Bruce Banner hulking out.”
While these are certainly some interesting ideas, we’re going to have call Occam’s razor on this theory and suggest that the simplest explanation is probably the best one. Namely, it seems less of a stretch to just take the Russos at their word when they admitted to fake trailer footage, which would hardly be a far cry from the studio’s well publicized technique of fake scripts.
Indeed, it could be all smoke and mirrors at the moment, and we may not know what to expect from Avengers 4 until the film finally hits theaters on May 3rd, 2019.
