Everyone missed Infinity War’s tragic throwback to the first Avengers film

A Marvel fan has spotted a tragic throwback in Avengers: Infinity War, which revisits the Battle of New York from the first Avengers movie. Did you spot this?

Marvel has a unique way of hiding Easter eggs in plain sight. They could be obvious -- like Captain America’s phone number -- or they could be more subtle, like the one recently discovered by fans online.

The Battle of New York will be revisited in Avengers 4, according to leaked set pictures.

A Reddit user on Sunday posted two screenshots from the first Avengers film, released in 2012 and Infinity War, which was released late April. Both shots, the fan noted, were like mirror images of each other. In the first shot, Captain America, Thor and Hulk huddle around Iron Man after he had just returned to Earth after lobbing a nuke into a wormhole. This comes from the epic Battle of New York, when Thanos had sent his Chitauri army to essentially test the waters on Earth.

In Infinity War, the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes must face the Mad Titan himself, Thanos. When he arrives for the epic finale of the film, which takes place in Wakanda, he comes armed with the Infinity Gauntlet, making him the most powerful being in the universe.

The post has attracted a lot of fan speculation on Reddit, with many realising that both scenes serve as emotion bookends to the Avengers’ journey. The fight that began in 2012 ended in Infinity War, but instead of the heroes celebrating victory, they had just been defeated.

Thanos snaps his fingers at the end of the film, which ‘kills’ half the Avengers, leaving the survivors to mount their last stand in the fourth film, due out in 2019.

Avengers 4 will serve as a conclusion to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it, with several fan theories suggesting the involvement of time travel, alternate realities and the deaths of some of our favourite characters.

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