The old rumor that the official title of the upcoming Avengers 4 would be “Avengers: Endgame” was an idea that pretty much came and went several months ago, but since the film’s first trailer confirmed this hearsay to be 100% correct, it’s become increasingly clear with 20-20 hindsight that the signs were there for us to see.
For one thing, as fans have previously pointed out, 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron saw Tony Stark refer to the alien threat he witnessed up in space as “the endgame,” but as it turns out, the character said more or less the same thing even earlier in the first teaser for what was then referred to as Parts 1 and 2 of Avengers: Infinity War.
“Whatever happens on Earth,” Iron Man says in a slight variation on his Age of Ultron line. “That there, that’s the endgame.”
At the very least, it’s evident that the team at Marvel Studios was pretty fond of the term “endgame” years before production began on Infinity War. And while a recent report alleged that the titles “Avengers: Annihilation” and “Avengers: Infinity Gauntlet” were also used behind the scenes in 2018, it’s very much starting to look like those two names were at most placeholders to throw off the fans and leakers, and that “Avengers: Endgame” had long been decided on.
Nonetheless, for a while there, co-directors Anthony and Joe Russo successfully convinced us otherwise when they claimed that the name of next year’s release won’t be taken from any Infinity War dialogue. Hopefully we know better now than to always take these filmmaking siblings at their word, but we’ll find out what else they’ve been hiding from us when Avengers: Endgame hits theaters on April 26th, 2019.
