Thor: Ragnarok will mark an important transition in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and could do more to establish Thanos and his power than any previous Marvel film.
The end of the Marvel universe as we know it is scheduled for May 3, 2019, when the still-untitled Avengers 4 comes out in theaters. Speaking with the Toronto Sun, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige described the Avengers: Infinity War sequel as the end of a “22-movie arc,” with the untitled Spider-Man: Homecoming sequel, releasing July 5 of the same year, inaugurating a new direction. “Two months later it will be Peter and Spider-Man that usher us into the aftermath and how things proceed from there,” Feige said.
That leaves Marvel Studios six more movies in the sprawling narrative that began with 2008’s Iron Man . And only two more movies — Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther — to put all the pieces in place for the end’s beginning: Avengers: Infinity War, in which we’ll see The Avengers and The Guardians of the Galaxy team up against Thanos, who loves death and would wield the power to bring it upon the universe, should he get together the Infinity Stones and pop ‘em in his Infinity Gauntlet. None of this has been very well established in the 16 Marvel movies released so far — Josh Brolin as Thanos has made two cameo appearances — so either Avengers: Infinity War has some good narrative tricks up its sleeve or Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther better squeeze in a lot of setup.
According to Feige, Ragnarok will serve exactly that purpose. “Things change drastically in Ragnarok and then build directly into Infinity War.”
This could mean a couple things. The most likely is that the final Infinity Stone will be a part of Ragnarok, a plot point Chris Hemsworth as much as admitted at Supanova Comic Con in Australia. All but one Infinity Stone is already accounted for, though it’s easy to miss, given how small their roles have been in the overarching narrative so far. Up to this point we’ve seen:
- The Tesseract in Thor and The Avengers
- The Aether in Thor: The Dark World
- The Orb in Guardians of the Galaxy
- The Mind Stone in Avengers: Age of Ultron
- The Eye of Agamotto in Dr. Strange
That leaves the final stone to be revealed in the galaxy-spanning events of Thor: Ragnarok. Combining the seven stones in the glove Thanos puts on at the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron, the Infinity Gauntlet, would give him, as you could probably guess, near-infinite power.
Thanos could even show up himself. Nothing’s been confirmed by Marvel, but it would make sense for him to have some sort of cameo appearance in Ragnarok . He was even directly referenced in the Team Thor short film that accompanied Captain America: Civil War.
Ragnarok will not just set up Avengers: Infinity War — the events of which will echo into Ant-Man & the Wasp, Captain Marvel and Avengers 4 — but also widen the spectrum of stories Marvel plans to tell in its post- Avengers 4 series. Ragnarok is one of the key overlaps between the more Earth-based and space-based wings of the Marvel Studios universe. The cosmic aspects are expected to be a big part of the series going forward, particularly after Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. The cosmic side offers “more storytelling avenues” Feige said. “More places to tell stories, more characters to tell stories with. Certainly those stories connect, as we’ll see with Infinity War in a very big way. Whatever happens with Vol. 3 and beyond remains to be seen.”
Though Thor: Ragnarok will be the beginning of the end of the Marvel universe as we’ve understood it since 2008, there will be no cessation in the endless onslaught of new Marvel movies. According to Feige, Marvel has movies planned “a few years past” 2023. “We have and are continuing to plot out the MCU post the next two Avengers films and what’s exciting is that the next Spider-Man will kick that off.”
Thor: Ragnarok comes out Nov. 3.
