Avengers: Endgame fan theories hint at where the final battle takes us

Theories and leaks from around the internet theorize the final battle in Avengers: Endgame will take place in a familiar setting. Plus, the Power Stone may be the key to defeating Thanos.

First, it was the Battle of New York. Then, Sokovia. And after that, Wakanda.

These are the locations for the final battles in Avengers, Age of Ultron, and Infinity War respectively. And now, we just may know where the final battle will take us in Avengers: Endgame.

There are two major sources with information on this supposed plot reveal. But both, we must say out the gate, require carrying a hefty bit of skepticism along with you. While these seem like plausible ideas, we, of course, can never tell for sure until we see the movie ourselves.

That being said, let’s start with the first of the two sources that reveal where the final battle will likely take place. Two days ago, Reddit user w2amit posted their theory to r/FanTheories, suggesting that the final battle will go down on Xandar. This is the location where the Power Stone was first held after it was given up by the Guardians of the Galaxy. And it’s also the location that Thanos visits off-screen when he starts his quest to find the stones.

As this theory suggests, the Russos brothers purposely cut this scene so that they would have time to actually visit it in the final movie. The theory mentions:

"They will be at the point and place where Thanos tries to get the first stone – Xandar will be the center of everything and the Avenger who acquires the Power Stone instead of Thanos will be the one who defeats Thanos – remember Thanos is already a powerful titan and defeating him will need the Power Stone’s abilities."

This isn’t the first theory to become suspicious of the cut trip to Xandar. A similar fan theory re-shared on the Reddit thread also thought skipping over Xandar was too good to be true. Between both theories, they make a case for it being obvious that the best way to defeat Thanos is to stop him from the very start.

If we’re taking time travel in Endgame to heart, it may just make more sense to stop Thanos before he gets a hold of the Infinity Stones versus after the snap. On one hand, this means that Thanos doesn’t have any of the stones, making it slightly easier to defeat him.

But on the other hand, everyone in Thanos’ Black Order is still alive. And the snapped away Avengers won’t be there to help, unless they go back in time to grab them for the battle. That’s just opening up the usual can of worms that makes time travel plots confusing, but it will likely be a lot more refined in the actual movie.

This leads us to the next major source, which draws its information from a supposed leaker online. BGR found a video while searching for more information on the Reddit post, and the two sources seem to go hand-in-hand quite well. The information is reported by YouTuber The Cosmic Wonder, who says an anonymous leaker saw footage of the movie and reported it online. The Cosmic Wonder doesn’t specify exactly where he found this information, though, so we’ll have to keep our skeptic goggles on.

In the video, he mentions the footage seen takes place on Xandar and apparently involves a few of the Avengers handling the Power Stone to take care of Thanos. He goes on to describe the leak, saying:

"In this scene, Thanos has arrived on Xandar with the Black Order and his army. He does not have the Infinity Gauntlet on… Although Thanos does not have any of the Infinity Stones, the Avengers are still losing to him, the Black Order, and his army…Captain America and Iron Man regroup. And Steve tells Tony that they’re not going to win this battle. Tony says: “What do you propose we do? Because we’re out of time and down to the wire.” Captain America replies, “We should cut the wire.”Right as Steve says this to Tony, Thanos shows up right in front of them. Iron Man’s helmet forms around his head, and Captain America lifts up his shield. But then we see Captain Marvel fly in and punch Thanos in the face with an energy blast, which sends him flying. Captain Marvel then gives Tony a metal case that contains the Power Stone in it. Tony immediately gives it to War Machine, and Rhodey puts the case into a huge device."

After that, he says the scene ends with a huge blast and cuts to white. Whatever the case may be, the scene is very descriptive and would mean a lot if true. First, the scene closely matches the Reddit theories that suggested there would be a battle on Xandar. The leaker mentioned in the video doesn’t necessarily say when that scene could take place, but a fight scene as big as that is bound to happen towards the end of the movie.

The next big thing to point out is that the Avengers are able to get a hold of the Power Stone before Thanos can wield it, and they (presumably) make good use of it. We can’t say for sure what the device is that the stone gets put into, but it makes us wonder what its purpose would be. You want something that will have enough power to take out Thanos, but you don’t want it to wipe out everyone in the process. So the huge white flash part at the end leaves us scratching our heads.  Of course, this is all just speculation.

When it comes to the Xandar scene, Infinity War‘s writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, as well as director Joe Russo, had an explanation for why that was actually left out of the film. In the commentary track for the movie, as Marvel Studios News points out, a scene on Xandar was left out for both the sake of time, originality, and to make the narrative more emotional:

"Christopher Markus: We wrote versions of Thanos attacking Xandar and it had a similar purpose in the script to what Knowhere does now. It was a place where Thanos and Gamora encountered each other. But the fact of the matter is, if Thanos went to Xandar to get [the Power] Stone, you know what happened. There was a big battle and he got it.Joe Russo: It was an attempt to not be repetitive. We decided to cut it from the script. And as [Markus] said, start in the middle of the story."

In the commentary, Russo and McFeely also went on say that collecting the Infinity Stones from a character attached to it, like Doctor Strange and Vision, has more of an emotional appeal, whereas showing the stone being taken from Nova Corps on Xander would be a waste of time and essentially wouldn’t add anything valuable to the narrative.

That means Xandar is still ripe for the picking if the Endgame team wants to revisit that moment. There’s a lot to be left to the imagination, and skipping over Xandar in Infinity War does give us the feeling that we’re missing something.

In the end, a few things about these theories may be true. Of course, this isn’t the last we’ll hear of the Infinity Stones, and they’ll likely be important one last time — whether that’s through defeating Thanos with the Power Stone or the Avengers collecting all the Infinity Stones to make a separate version of the gauntlet. Second, all signs definitely seem to be pointing to time travel in this movie. It’s just not certain where they’ll be going.

Lastly, we’ll definitely get to see some Captain Marvel action going in the movie. We just hope she has more of a role in taking down Thanos than passing off an Infinity Stone to her teammate. She’s way too powerful to default to a minimal role like that.

Now that we’ve seen the slightly depressing Super Bowl TV spot for Endgame, we’re hoping that the final battle will include a lot of great moments to keep us cheering on our feet.

We’re fine with it having the same amount of laughs and heartache as Infinity War, but we definitely need a happy ending.