Earlier this week, an Avengers: Endgame LEGO leak emerged which teased such potentially revealing toys as a new Quinjet and a giant, Hulkbuster-style suit for War Machine. But look a little closer and you may find another significant detail in the villains that Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are fighting.
While some of the new sets come with minifigures for Thanos’ Outrider minions, the images also seem to confirm the legitimacy of an older leak that showed the LEGO design for the Chitauri. Though these extra-terrestrial figures have shown up briefly in a few MCU installments, by far their biggest moment in the spotlight has been 2012’s The Avengers, in which they fought the titular heroes in the Battle of New York. And while there’s no guarantee that the creatures will make it into the upcoming film, you can see why some fans are taking the new image as further evidence that Endgame will see Iron Man and co. travel back in time to their first encounter with Thanos’ forces.
Set photos have already made it clear that the Avengers: Infinity War sequel will revisit the Battle of New York in some manner, and seeing how Scott Lang and an older-looking Tony Stark were among the heroes wandering the location, it feels safe to assume that this won’t just be a flashback sequence. Throw in a mention of “time vortexes” in Ant-Man and the Wasp and Samuel L. Jackson’s recent claim that Captain Marvel is “one of the few people in the Marvel universe that can time travel,” and many fans these days are taking the time travel prediction as fact.
Regardless, we’ll find out if and how our heroes clash with the Chitauri once more when Avengers: Endgame hits theaters on April 26th, 2019.