Nick Fury has always been the grand architect of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The fictional version of Kevin Feige, if you will, who’s typically one step ahead of the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in his plans to bring together a team of remarkable people. He may have perished along with half of the universe at the end of Avengers: Infinity War, but such is the fans’ faith in the character that they still think he could have a plan up his sleeve.
Reddit user Sfmarch07 has outlined their own Avengers 4 theory this week which revolves around Fury. Their idea’s that Captain Marvel will be used to set-up the big finale to the MCU as we know it. Somehow in the 1990s-set prequel, the young Fury will discover all the major points of his and the Earth’s future. This is why he’s always got a master plan when we’ve known him and was so keen to form the Avengers initiative.
“My theory doesn’t so much pertain to specific things that will happen in Avengers 4, as much as it deals with an overarching idea of the MCU that will culminate between Captain Marvel and end in Avengers 4. I’ve taken elements of my theory from other common theories I’ve seen around online. My theory basically is that along with the time travel element that the movie will have which has been widely speculated and the Avengers needing to retrieve the infinity stones from different points in time to fight Thanos, additionally there is going to end up being a huge element of “everything happening for a reason” that will encompass everything that has happened in the entire MCU up to this point thus far.
What I mean by that, is I believe Nick Fury in the 90’s in the Captain Marvel movie will be shown or made aware of the future and future events, potentially even by Dr. Strange coming back in time from Infinity War, and he will be shown specific things that he and other characters have to do throughout the entire MCU to ultimately set up future events for how they need to be in order for the Avengers to win in Avengers 4, per Dr. Strange’s end game plan from the possible 1 out of 14 million outcomes. Meaning everything that has happened in MCU so far had to happen the way it did but more importantly was set up in certain cases to happen the way it did partly by Fury himself.
If you go back and watch most of the scenes and post credit scenes with Nick Fury in the MCU movies, it’s like he always knows something that the other characters don’t, and knows how to tell them just what they need to hear or he contributes something that makes a big difference with no explanation of how or why he knew to do it, from recruiting Iron Man, Hulk, and Captain America, to in Iron Man 2 when he gives Tony his fathers box. Or like at the end of Thor 1 when he instructs Erik Selvig to work on the cube. Or in Age of Ultron when he shows up out of nowhere in the barn and then pushes Tony and the team forward to where they ultimately create Vision with the mind stone.
If you go back and re-watch the nuke scene from Avengers 1, right when Tony goes through the worm hole with the nuke everyone at Shield celebrates except for Fury and Maria Hill, instead they look at each other and they look down/dejected. You’re meant to assume they’re sad because they might have just lost Tony Stark. But the movie intentionally doesn’t show Fury’s reaction when Tony comes back through the worm hole.
My theory is they act the way they did because they know that Tony going through the worm hole is the real beginning of the Infinity War/Thanos timeline, and it will lead to Tony’s PTSD and everything that not only Tony does after that point but also sets in motion everything that happens in the MCU after that event, eventually leading to and including Thanos’ snap and the events of Avengers 4 . Fury and Maria vehemently tried to stop the nuke from being fired during that scene, Fury even shoots down a jet on the carrier, because it was like they already knew the Avengers would close the portal and win the battle without the nuke. But I think Fury knew that the nuke going through the portal would alert Thanos of Earth’s capabilities and make Earth a target, and it would also make Thanos aware of who Tony Stark, like he says in Infinity War.
If Fury was shown the events of the future back in 1990 during the Captain Marvel movie and was shown things he needed to do for the future, that would also explain why he started out as a lower level guy in Shield who was ready to hang it up according to the Captain Marvel trailer but ends up becoming the director of Shield by the events of the first Iron Man movie in 2008. During Captin Marvel, Nick Fury learns about aliens and cosmic threats for the first time, which is his true motivation for assembling the Avengers in the first place. And I don’t think its a coincidence that Tony Stark is the first Avenger that he recruits either, which is the other part of my theory. I think in Avengers 4 through some of the time travel that will happen, you’ll be shown or alluded to how all the events in the MCU up to this point have been set up and happened the way they did for a reason, including especially the events of Civil War which was also written by the Russo brothers the same as A3 and A4.”
The Redditor then goes on to outline the Tony Stark half of their plan, which is that he’ll travel back in time during A4 and, due to having ingratiated himself into HYDRA’s ranks, will have to order the execution of his own parents, Howard and Maria, as seen in flashback in Captain America: Civil War. The fan suggests this time loop could lead to Doctor Strange defeating Thanos in a similar way to how he bested Dormammu.
This is certainly one of the more complex theories of all those that are floating around out there to do with the upcoming sequel, but it’s very tempting to think that all Fury’s plotting was because of some bigger purpose. Perhaps his role in the grand scheme of things will come together when we see March’s Captain Marvel and May’s Avengers 4. Time will tell, but color us intrigued for now.
