Avengers 4 is still more that 7 months away, which means that fans have over half a year to get their theories straight before the Russo Brothers’ highly anticipated sequel to Infinity War proves our predictions right or wrong while presumably making an insane amount of money in the process.
At this point, it’s easy to identify a few ideas that continue to pop up consistently in these theories – including key roles for Doctor Strange, Ant-Man, time travel, the Soul World, and the Quantum Realm – and probably with good reason, given the evidence available to us. But while this new Reddit post from user Kelmerfud has some pretty familiar ingredients, its various ideas have been put together into a well-reasoned whole, making this theory worth the read.
As usual, Doctor Strange has a central part to play in this piece of speculation, having already foreseen the one conceivable future where Earth’s Mightiest Heroes triumph against Thanos. Kelmerfud starts off by suggesting that this process of looking into the future isn’t as straightforward as it may seem.
“When Doctor Strange viewed the 14 million alternate futures , I believe the one future he saw where they ultimately won in the end, he saw the soul world and the quantum realm. If you go back to the doctor strange movie when he used the time stone to create a time loop against Dormammu, it reset, or looped, as soon as he died. I think the same concept is happening while he is viewing the potential futures. Because he’s only seeing his own future, so once he dies there’s nothing left to view. And we know he would have seen himself turn to dust, but he knows that they win and that Tony Stark needs to survive to do so. So how would he be able to see that if he’s a pile of dust?”
A valid question, and one that this Redditor answers by arguing that even after being dusted, the characters still maintain some form of consciousness.
“Well my theory is , instead of actually dying, him and the other half of humanity were transported into the soul world, so now he would be able to continue viewing the future, where in the end he’s brought back and sees it’s by Tony Starks doing and that they have defeated Thanos . This would explain why Doctor Strange traded the time stone for Tony Starks life.”
It’s here that one Scott Lang enters the theory after getting stranded in the Quantum Realm at the end of Ant-Man and the Wasp.
“Once Doctor Strange is in the soul [world], he quickly finds a way out but only into the quantum realm where he will find Ant-man and use Scott to send a message to Tony. Similar to how Janet did in the Ant-man movie. Scott will end up using a time.vortex to.escape the quantum realm and accidentally end up years in the future, he will seek out Tony Stark and tell him about the time vortexes within the quantum realm.”
Now that we finally have a Phase 1 Avenger joining the action, the theory moves on to the widely predicted device of time travel, while also drawing on rumors that Stark will be making use of one his most unfortunately titled inventions.
“Tony will use his B.A.R.F tech on Scott to explore the quantum realm through Scotts memories of being there. Where he will stumble on to Doctor strange showing him which time vortex to use to go back in time and telling him about everyone being trapped in the the soul world. Giving Tony the motivation and drive he needs to save everyone.”
Given everything we currently know and think we know about next year’s release, there’s a pretty good chance that at least some of the above ideas will find their way into the actual film, even if there are plenty of other ways that this same set of plot points could be arranged into a coherent story. Regardless, we’ll see what elaborate way the Russo Brothers plan to save the universe when Avengers 4 comes out on May 3rd, 2019.
