Avengers: Endgame Fan Catches Clever Foreshadowing in Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Ten years and 23 movies later, Marvel Studios has crafted a massive cinematic universe with hundreds of characters and hours of storytelling. With something as expansive as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s increasingly common of one creator planting the seeds of a plot device in one movie with a major payoff at some point in a later movie. That’s particularly the case with Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Avengers: Endgame, the first and last Marvel films directed by Joe and Anthony Russo.

As one eagle-eyed Instagrammer has pointed out in a now-viral post making the rounds online again, Captain America (Steve Rogers) let it be known in The Winter Soldier he had faith there’d always be heroes to back him up — even if it meant starting the fight by himself. The Winter Soldier scene in question deals with Rogers revealing HYDRA’s infiltration of SHIELD to a broadcast of all SHIELD agents; the post then syncs that up with moments from the final battle of Endgame, where the character’s about the take on Thanos by himself before the rest of the Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and most other heroes of the MCU show up.

Earlier this year, we spoke with Endgame visual effects supervisor Matt Aitken, who oversaw the team at Weta Digital in creating the CGI for the final battle. “Because they would have got there within about the first five minutes of the fight, because the crater is quite small, we had to kind of artfully restage action pieces so that they’re covering some ground,” Aitken says about the sling ring entrance. “Then we back everything up to the other side of the crater and then they cover some more ground and then we back everything up again so they’re kind of going over the same piece of crater over and over again, but hopefully people aren’t noticing that.”

He added, “We like moving the dressing around and changing the perspective, so it may be that the crater ultimately feels bigger than it is. But we’re helping with that by dressing and drifting smoke elements and atmospheric haze and all these things can help make the crater feel bigger than it actually is, so I think it’s not something that people have found off-putting or jarring.”

Both Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Avengers: Endgame are now streaming on Disney+.

Other upcoming Marvel Studios projects include Black Widow on May 1, 2020, The Eternals on November 6, 2020, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings on February 12, 2021, WandaVision in spring 2021, Loki in spring 2021, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness on May 7, 2021, Spider-Man 3 on July 16, 2021, What If? In summer 2021, Hawkeye in fall 2021, and Thor: Love and Thunder on November 5, 2021, and Black Panther 2 on May 6, 2022. Marvel Studios Disney+ series without release dates include Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, and She-Hulk.