Unused Avengers: Infinity War Concept Art Has Fans Wondering About Avengers 4

Breaking down what's happened in a new Marvel Cinematic Universe movie is fun - as is speculating on what will happen in future films. However, once an MCU movie is out, it's also fun to go back and examine all the things that didn't happen. Case in point: This piece of unused concept art from Avengers: Infinity War that now has Marvel fans asking some big Avengers 4 questions!

This concept art scene was depicted in one of the first teaser featurettes that Marvel Studios released to mark the start of production on Infinity War, and had fans speculating about an advanced version of Iron Man's Iron Legion helping to secure Earth against Thanos' invasion. Of course, that never happened, so now speculation has turned to toward this moment possibly being a scene that was saved for Avengers 4.

...But it's a highly debatable assertion.

For one thing, there's some doubt about which film the artwork was actually from, with a lot of fans on Reddit sourcing it to Avengers: Age of Ultron. However, there's also a lot of speculation about how this scene would fit into Avengers 4, and it's pretty interesting.

One fan theory points to Avengers 4 picking up with a time-jump that introduces us to a very different Tony Stark. It's been a long-standing theory that Avengers 4 Tony will have returned from space and had a baby with Pepper Potts; if that's the case, then an advanced form of the Iron Legion could be Tony's way of keeping his actual self out of harm's way. It would also make sense that Tony would use some additional hands, as Earth will be left with fewer resources for law and order, and Tony will have to oversee policing the world, in part through the Iron Legion. That is an interesting scenario because it sets the MCU version of Tony Stark up to follow his comic book predecessor, possibly transitioning into a job as a new head of SHIELD or the World Security Council when Phase 4 begins. That would be a good "Option C" to keep Robert Downey Jr. hanging around in the corners of the MCU, without requiring him to appear that often onscreen. It also would set the stage for someone like Riri Williams.

Other fans theories get a lot more wild - like one predicting that we're seeing Tony from Iron Man 3 somehow informed to reconfigure the Iron Legion to stop Thanos. Let us know your thoughts / theories in the comments!

Ant-Man and the Wasp is now in theaters. Avengers: Infinity War will be released on home video in August. Other upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movies include Captain Marvel on March 8, 2019, the fourth Avengers movie on May 3, 2019, Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5, 2019, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in 2020.