200 Hidden Details in Avengers Infinity War Point Toward Avengers Doomsday

Revisiting Avengers Infinity War for the first time in six years, I found 200 details worth sharing in a scene by scene breakdown of the movie, along with parallels the Russo brothers seem to be bringing back in Avengers Doomsday.

Thanos Takes the Statesman, and the Film Frames Him as Infinity War's True Protagonist

The opening distress signal broadcast over the Marvel Studios title card is voiced by Thor director Kenneth Branagh, who would later star in Christopher Nolan's Tenet. This film bookends with a distress call from another director, Nick Fury. The ship is the one we last saw at the end of Thor Ragnarok, attacked in that film's mid-credit scene. Half of the Asgardians escaped, including Valkyrie, Korg, and Miek, seen fleeing in the Grandmaster's pleasure craft, the Commodore, which I assume got away before Thanos powerstoned the Statesman. Among the bodies on the ground is Roscoe, one of the gladiators from Sakaar, a detail I never caught until this rewatch.

Loki rolls his eyes as Ebony Maw monologues, as if he has heard these diatribes before, and the line Maw says, "My humble personage bows before your grandeur," is a direct quote from what Mephisto says to Thanos in Jim Starlin's Infinity Gauntlet comic. Loki has history with Thanos, having spent at least a year with him following the events of Thor before being sent to Earth with the Mind Stone scepter and the Chitauri army.

At 29 minutes of screen time, Thanos has more of this film than any other character. Thor gets only half, 14 and a half minutes, and that disparity is reflected in this scene where the Avengers are so small and defeated that we do not even recognize Thor at Thanos's feet. The writers framed Thanos as the true protagonist. "It really is his journey, making Thor his structural antagonist," and had Thor gone for the head, he would be the hero. Instead he is this movie's crazy ax murderer. Thanos's line about failure turning the legs to jelly foreshadows Tony Stark and Steve Rogers wobbling off their feet by the end of the film, and Thanos himself going jelly when he fails in Endgame.

Loki calls Thanos's bluff before revealing the Tesseract, which Thor thought was destroyed on Asgard but which Loki actually swiped during Ragnarok, pulling it from thin air similarly to how Doctor Strange will later reveal the Time Stone. Thanos then beats Hulk in a fight, and it is hard to tell in every shot whether he is using the Power Stone. Josh Brolin based the performance on Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, and the visible stubble on Thanos's head suggests he shaves it out of a similarly dogmatic commitment before retiring his armor for a spiritual quest. Seeing Hulk lose here makes Thanos genuinely frightening, though it unfortunately started a trend of Hulk being nerfed in some of the titles that followed. Loki then tries the same hidden dagger trick he used on Thor in Avengers, but Thanos stops it with the Space Stone already sitting in his gauntlet. Loki's death is preceded by a memory of Odin's recent death, and he even turns his head with the same framing as before when he calls himself "Loki, prince of Asgard, Odin's son."

Loki and Heimdall's Deaths Turn Infinity War Into a Story About Mourning

There was a time when I thought Infinity War was a story of sacrifice, and it is in a way, since the theme spoken aloud is "we don't trade lives." But on a deeper level, Loki and Heimdall's shocking early deaths establish this as a story where Thanos's victory is already preordained. It is a story of mourning, about how we accept the deaths of loved ones, and about what kind of monster would think watching a loved one die makes things better. Thanos is a psycho Malthusian eco-terrorist who is wrong on so many levels, but the Avengers' stubborn refusal to let any of them die is naive.

In this movie the Avengers are taught a brutal lesson in triage. They are able, in Endgame, to undo everything Thanos does in the snap, but all the deaths that happen before the snap cannot be undone. It will be worth watching what lessons the Avengers take from this encounter when they face Doctor Doom in Doomsday, and whether they are more willing to make sacrifices knowing they cannot simply pull a time heist all over again.

Bruce Banner Crashes to Earth, and Tony Stark Gets a Vision of Baby Morgan

Hulk's Bifrost trajectory takes him past the Sun and then the Moon, and a Redditor charted this out to propose a solar eclipse that the ancient Norse would have read as a sign of Ragnarok. Banner lands in the Sanctum Sanctorum with a warning, just as Silver Surfer does in the Infinity Gauntlet comics, and the Cloak of Levitation immediately wraps around Doctor Strange.

Tony Stark tells Pepper Potts about a vivid dream of a kid named Morgan, which comes true in Endgame when they have a daughter by that name. As Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness later establishes, dreams are our view into the lives of other versions of ourselves across the multiverse, so Tony was effectively peeping on a multiversal version of himself. Tony has also installed a housing for his nano suit on his chest, telling Pepper, "I'm just trying to protect us. Future us-es," a line that hints at the time travel shenanigans to come. When Bruce Banner arrives and gives Tony a desperate hug, they all head to the Sanctum, where Wong and Strange catch Tony up on the Infinity Stones while Tony looks at an unopened text message on the phone Steve Rogers gave him at the end of Civil War.

Peter Parker Suits Up in the Iron Spider During the New York Fight

Peter Parker's spidey sense triggers his arm hairs on a field trip, similar to the tiny hairs spiders actually use to sense vibrations, and he leaps off the Queensboro Bridge, the same bridge next to the Roosevelt Island Tramway where he and MJ will later stand in Spider-Man: No Way Home. During the fight against Ebony Maw's ship, Doctor Strange conjures the Winds of Watoom to nullify the wind damage, a clear sign to Tony that magic might be powerful enough to take on Thanos.

Tony tells Friday to "Unlock 17A," one of many appearances of the number 17 in the MCU, releasing what becomes Peter's Iron Spider suit, a suit inspired by the Civil War comics that first featured mechanical legs, or waldos, in Amazing Spider-Man number 529. Peter follows orders to save Doctor Strange and ends up beamed aboard the ascending spaceship, a plan that saw Ebony Maw burn his hands on the Eye of Agamotto much like the Nazi grabbing the headpiece in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Wong sever Cull Obsidian's hand on the other side of a portal.

The Guardians Rescue Thor and Learn Thanos Already Destroyed Xandar

The Guardians of the Galaxy reunion happens several years after Guardians Vol. 2, noticeable from Peter Quill's facial hair, and they are singing along to Rubberband Man, a song originally written to cheer up the Spinners producer's son for being teased about his weight, which plays right before Quill himself gets fat-shamed. When Thor wakes up aboard their ship, Gamora reveals her history with Thanos, correcting Thor that Thanos is her stepfather, not her father, and that she hates him just as much as Thor does, echoing how Thor once corrected Natasha that Loki was adopted.

Thor tells the Guardians that Thanos already had the Power Stone because he stole it the previous week when he decimated Xandar. We still do not know how badly Xandar was destroyed, though I would assume Thanos and the Black Order killed off at least half the population, and since anything undone by Hulk's snap in Endgame only fixed what happened after Thanos's original snap, Xandar's destruction would not have been reversed. Thor then heads to Nidavellir with Rocket and Groot to forge a Thanos-killing weapon, assuring the Guardians that the Time and Mind Stones are safe on Earth with the Avengers, and warning Quill that ordinary bodies would crumble and minds collapse into madness if they tried to wield the stones themselves.

Vision and Wanda's Edinburgh Hideout Falls to Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight

Back on Earth, Vision and Wanda have been hiding out in Edinburgh, Scotland, a detail confirmed in an Infinity War prelude comic in which Wanda fled there after Civil War before Vision found her and they rekindled their romance. Wanda scans Vision's Mind Stone here, visually foreshadowing how she will later blast it out of his head, and Vision's line "I just feel you" foreshadows both his final words to her in this film and the heartbreaking callback in WandaVision.

Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight arrive to take the Mind Stone, and Glaive stabs Vision with his glaive, a weapon that can stop him from phasing, which is why Vision cannot phase for the rest of the movie. Steve Rogers appears from behind a passing train as the Avengers theme plays, a staging choice that makes me think of how the Russo brothers have compared their process on Doomsday to Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, in which Harmonica famously appears from behind a train, and it makes me wonder whether they see Robert Downey Jr.'s casting as the villain in Doomsday the same way that film cast its good guy as the bad guy. Natasha, now blonde and wearing a vest we later learn in Black Widow came from Yelena Belova, manages to stab Glaive with his own glaive, though Proxima's later insistence to Natasha that she "will pay for his life" with hers turns out to be a ruse to draw Glaive back to Vision.

Gamora's Fake Stabbing of Thanos Confirms He Already Holds the Reality Stone

On Knowhere, we get a flashback to Thanos's attack on Gamora's home world, the Zehoberei, where the Black Order and the Chitauri killed off half the population, and to Thanos meeting a young Gamora played by Ariana Greenblatt, who later played young Ahsoka Tano in the live-action Ahsoka series. As the Guardians sneak up on Thanos and the Collector, Thanos calls the Collector someone who would "sell your own brother" for a trinket, a reference to his brother the Grandmaster from Ragnarok.

One of the items in the Collector's vault is a blue man, a nod by the Russo brothers to the form Tobias Funke took throughout Arrested Development, but this whole vault turns out to be a Reality Stone illusion, since Thanos already holds the stone, formerly the Aether from Thor: The Dark World. When Gamora stabs Thanos, the dagger comes back clean of blood, proof the stabbing was illusory. The stone glows red in his gauntlet, similar to a red gem I noticed in Doctor Doom's armor in the Avengers: Doomsday trailer, which makes me think that if Doom does not intend to save or reshape his universe in some way, he likely sought out the Infinity Stones in his own universe, designated 828.

Wakanda Musters for War While Ebony Maw Tortures Doctor Strange and Nebula Suffers Twice

Back at Avengers HQ, Natasha and Bruce reunite for the first time since Age of Ultron, and Vision's argument that "one life cannot stand in the way of defeating" Thanos is met with Wanda's reply, "We don't trade lives, Vision," the refusal that ultimately costs the team everything. In Wakanda, T'Challa gives Bucky a new vibranium arm and calls him the White Wolf, a title that resurfaces in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, though in the comics the White Wolf is a different character entirely.

Ebony Maw tortures Doctor Strange using instruments "originally designed for microsurgery," a cruel irony given Strange's pre-Sorcerer Supreme career. Peter Parker eventually blasts Maw into space, similar to how Ripley deals with the Xenomorph Queen in Aliens, and Strange warns Peter, "If it comes to saving you or the kid or the Time Stone, I will not hesitate to let either of you die," a level-headed stance I think stands out against the other Avengers' avoidable losses, since Strange learned from the Ancient One that death gives life meaning.

Thanos, meanwhile, uses the Power Stone and Space Stone to tear Nebula apart and torture each piece, doubling the pain he once inflicted on Thor, according to Gamora. Nebula's inability to lie, referenced here and in Guardians Vol. 2, gets echoed by her own line in Endgame that "my father is many things, a liar is not one of them." Thanos also reveals he knows about a map to the Soul Stone that Gamora burned to ash, which raises the question of who made that map in the first place, and whether a version of it exists in the 828 universe that could explain how Doctor Doom found the Soul Stone there.

Nidavellir Forges Stormbreaker, Raising a Four Gauntlet Theory

Thor, Rocket, and Groot find the ruins of Nidavellir and Eitri, played by Peter Dinklage, who reveals he forged the original Infinity Gauntlet using a mold. The writers interpreted the gauntlet Thanos wore in the Age of Ultron post-credit scene as a practice gauntlet, which if true leaves the MCU with four total gauntlets: that practice one, a fake one in Odin's vault, Thanos's Infinity War gauntlet, and Tony Stark's eventual Nano Gauntlet.

The new weapon they forge, Stormbreaker, shares its name with the axe carried by Beta Ray Bill as Thor in the comics, and it can summon the Bifrost, marked by the same symbol the Bifrost scorches into the ground. Runes along its bladed edge translate to "loose the dogs of war," a paraphrase of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Groot cuts off his own arm to serve as the handle, meaning that from this point on, whenever Thor swings Stormbreaker, Groot is effectively at his side, a detail later paid off in Thor: Love and Thunder when Thor plants the handle like a tree.

Doctor Strange's 14,000,605 Futures on Titan May Explain His Nerves Around Doctor Doom

After Strange cushions the crash landing on Titan for Tony and Peter, the Guardians arrive too, having been tipped off by Nebula, and Quill's line "Yeah, I'll do you one better, who's Gamora" leads into what I think is the real thematic question of the film. "That question of why is Gamora is kind of the answer of this movie," since Gamora represents the sacrifice Thanos is willing to make that the heroes are not.

While Strange reviews the 14,000,605 possible outcomes of their fight with Thanos, revealing that only one leads to victory, I like how the green rings on his forearms rotate like he is scrubbing through film reels. "I think a key detail we have to remember when it comes to the usage of the time stone, the user of the time stone can only see their own future or their own past," which means when Strange fast-forwards, he would have skipped past his own dusting straight to his return five years later at the Battle of Earth. That suggests Strange's nerves in this scene come specifically from knowing he will eventually have to tell Tony Stark that he must sacrifice himself, and that Strange must surrender the Time Stone here and let Thanos win in order for that surviving future to exist at all.

Following that logic further, I wonder whether Strange also glimpsed himself later in Multiverse of Madness, learning about incursions and eventually serving in an unfamiliar kingdom with his hair in a ponytail, which might explain his flicker of recognition toward the Doctor Doom figure without him consciously placing the face. He is, I think, just a little confused by a sense of cosmic familiarity rather than full recognition.

Red Skull's Surprise Return on Vormir Precedes Gamora's Sacrifice

On Vormir, Thanos and Gamora encounter Red Skull, the big surprise cameo of this movie, teleported there years earlier by the Space Stone when he touched the Tesseract in Captain America: The First Avenger. He is played here by Ross Marquand, replacing Hugo Weaving, and he greets them as "Thanos, son of Alars" and "Gamora, daughter of Thanos," a title that suggests Thanos was the truest parental figure to her soul despite not being her real father.

Thanos keeps Gamora's All Things Balanced dagger on his belt throughout this sequence, and when she grabs it to try to kill herself, it turns out to be another Reality Stone illusion, meaning Thanos maintained that trick the whole time as a fail-safe. His tear falls directly into an existing trench on his cheek, as though he were built to mourn. Once Gamora is dead at the bottom of the cliff, blood stains visible on the ground around her suggest others have tried and failed to claim the Soul Stone before, sacrifices that did not work because they did not love the person they threw off the cliff enough.

Wakanda's Battle Wipes Out the Black Order Even as the Avengers Lose Ground

Back in Wakanda, Bruce embarrasses himself bowing after previously being unable to even pronounce the country's name, while T'Challa gets Steve's shield back and embraces M'Baku, who will eventually take his place as Wakanda's leader in Wakanda Forever. The Wakandans' war cry of "Yibambe," meaning hold or hold fast, first appeared in Black Panther as the River Tribe's call. T'Challa's line that Thanos "would have nothing but dust and blood" is, in hindsight, solid foreshadowing.

Eitri smashes the Stormbreaker mold so the weapon can never be forged again, and Thor, Rocket, and Groot ride the Bifrost to Wakanda, with Thor's arrival rallying the other heroes, especially Bruce Banner, relieved to see his friend survived the earlier encounter on the Statesman. I compare Thor showing up here to Michael Myers walking into a final fight, since the movie's structure still frames him as the story's antagonist even in this crowd-pleasing moment.

Wanda tosses aside giant mechanical tunneling blades, prompting Okoye to ask why she was not doing that the whole time, and it sets up Wanda holding her own against Thanos both later in this film and again in Endgame. Rocket's fascination with Bucky's new vibranium arm, asking "how much for the arm," pays off when Nebula eventually gives him one in the Guardians Holiday Special. Banner keeps begging Hulk to come out and is refused, and a deleted scene would have shown Banner and Hulk arguing this out inside the Hulkbuster suit before he burst free as Smart Hulk, a version the Russos ultimately saved for Endgame instead.

Thanos Defeats Strange, Tony, and Thor in Duels That Echo Iron Man's Past Villains

On Titan, the wizard duel between Thanos and Strange was based on the Vincent Price versus Boris Karloff duel in The Raven, and the fight eventually spills into Tony Stark versus Thanos, which I noticed echoes Tony's past foes in reverse order. His thruster-powered hook recalls his shotgun armor against Aldrich Killian in Iron Man 3, and cutting Thanos enough to draw "a drop of blood" echoes Whiplash's line in Iron Man 2 about making a god bleed. After stabbing Tony, Thanos tilts over him just as Obadiah Stane once did in the first Iron Man, and I think he smartly focuses on Tony's head knowing Tony will waste his nanobots protecting his brain. Strange ultimately gives up the Time Stone to save Tony, telling him, "We're in the endgame now."

Back in Wakanda, Steve Rogers is actually able to hold Thanos back for a moment, and Josh Brolin plays a subtle look of surprise and respect that this human can do it. Wanda begins destroying the Mind Stone while single-handedly holding off Thanos and his five other Infinity Stones, killing Vision in the process, only for Thanos to revive him with the Time Stone and kill him again by yanking the stone out directly.

Vision Dies, Thor Fails to Go for the Head, and the Snap Erases Half of All Life

Thor throws Stormbreaker at Thanos and it cuts through the power of all six Infinity Stones, which suggests to me that Doctor Doom must be incredibly powerful to stop that same axe with only a finger in Doomsday. But Thor is blinded by vengeance and aims for the chest instead of the head, prompting Thanos's line, "You should have gone for the head." Thor throws himself in as this movie's antagonist once his moment of victory slips away, much like a defeated villain losing his cool.

Thanos completes the snap, and everyone from Peter Quill to Peter Parker to T'Challa to Bucky to Groot fades to dust. James Gunn later tweeted that Groot's final "I am Groot" to Rocket translates to "dad." Peter Parker's spidey sense triggers one last time moments before he dusts, meaning he understood what was happening rather than being caught off guard, and he tells Tony he's sorry before fading in his arms. Thanos retreats to a farm and watches the sunrise exactly as he told Doctor Strange he would, his armor left hanging in the background like a scarecrow, similar to farmer Thanos in Jim Starlin's comics. As Gamora once asked him, "What did it cost?" and his answer, "Everything," closes out a film where the Avengers' refusal to trade lives ends up costing them everyone anyway.

What do you think Doctor Strange actually saw when he looked past Endgame toward that unfamiliar kingdom and Doctor Doom's face?