Back in July, a couple of very interesting pieces of concept art hit the internet. They showed the heroes of Avengers 4 heading into battle looking quite different from how they appeared in Infinity War.
Captain America was back to being clean-shaven, the Hulk was wearing a superhero suit, War Machine’s armor had an upgrade and Black Widow had dyed her hair back to red and was sporting yet another stylish hairdo. At the time, there was a debate about whether this was a genuine leak from Marvel Studios or a particularly talented fan seeing if he could pass his work off as professional.
Well, we now have our answer, courtesy of some new set pictures (which can be found via the link below over on Just Jared). Though these don’t show the heroes in their new costumes, they do correlate exactly with some of the leaked pieces of art, with Cap’s clean-shaven look and Black Widow’s hairdo appearing identical to the images. But what does this mean for Avengers 4?
Well, for one, it indicates that there’s going to be some sort of time jump from the end of Infinity War. Given that Black Widow was sporting a blonde bob in that film and given that human hair grows approximately 6-7 inches in a year, we can surmise that the sequel will take place at least a year after Thanos’ snap.
That gives us a year to establish a brand new status quo for the MCU, perhaps including such fan favorite theories as Shuri donning the mantle of Black Panther. It also allows Tony Stark time to return to Earth from Titan and for the Hulk to emerge from his psychological shock, perhaps as a calm yet powerful Professor Hulk archetype from the comics.
With the most popular theory being that Avengers 4 will utilize time travel to undo the Snap, we may be in for some Back the Future Part II style revisiting of the MCU’s greatest hits, which would certainly explain the multiple reports that they’d recreated the Battle for New York set from 2012’s The Avengers. Chalk that up as speculation for now, but either way, all will be revealed on May 3rd, 2019.
