Another day, another theory on how our favorite Marvel superheroes will get out of the mess that was made in Infinity War.
The latest piece of speculation comes from a Reddit user who offers a new variation on the time travel rumors surrounding next year’s Avengers 4. He starts off by acknowledging that turning back the clock before the infamous, genocidal finger-snap could potentially create one of those pesky paradoxes that have plagued many a time travel storyline.
“After all, as soon as the snap is reversed, in all technicality, whatever plan was set in motion by the post-snap era heroes never would have been enacted.”
While it’s pretty common for writers of time travel fiction to just leave paradoxes as they are, this Reddit user feels that a more logically sound solution can come from the Time Stone’s ability to exclude individual people from its effects.
“Considering this capability, it is possible whichever hero ends up using the stones could use the time stone to reverse the snap while excluding all the heroes involved in A4 events from its effects. This would also make the story feel less cheap by preserving all Avengers 4 character arcs.”
From here, he expands at length on this theory and how these events would set up the inevitable final battle, with all the Avengers in attendance.
“The future heroes will use a new gauntlet to harness the stones and rewind back to just before the snap. On Wakanda, we will see the dust come out of thin air in reverse direction and collect to once again form the bodies of those who disintegrated. At the same time, IW-era Steve, Thor (while holding the Stormbreaker in Thanos’ chest), Rocket, Nat, Banner, Rhodes, etc. will disappear in the green time stone effect. Tony and Nebula will disappear from Titan in a similar way, leaving Spider-Man and the Guardians very confused.
Suddenly, the future Avengers show up and use the space stone to teleport Spider-Man and the Guardians back to Earth. Same goes for Ant-Man from the Quantum Realm… Just before Thanos snaps, the green time stone effects surround the gauntlet and all the stones disappear, just as the The Avengers and Guardians teamup show up with one of the heroes wielding a new, complete gauntlet.”
The post goes into even more detail on how this would all play out, and it’s likely that this theory is a little too specific in its ideas to be a fully accurate predictor of what to expect from the upcoming sequel. Still, in its broad strokes, it seems to hold up reasonably well against what we know (or think we know) about the movie, even if it does contradict the alternative theory that the Quantum Realm in Ant-Man and the Wasp will be how our heroes will journey into the past.
While you can expect plenty more explanations in the next year for how the dusted heroes will be making their comebacks, Captain Marvel will no doubt shed a little light on the situation when it hits theaters on March 8th, 2019, before Avengers 4 arrives and puts an end to all the speculating on May 3rd.
