'Avengers 4: Endgame' Spoilers: 1 'Infinity War' Line Confirms Time Travel

We’re almost certain that time travel will play a big role in Avenger: Endgame, but what if one of Marvel’s biggest characters already travelled through time before the previous movie even started? An overlooked scene from Infinity War may prove those time travel theories right and reveal Iron Man’s role in defeating Thanos.

Is this an Avengers: Endgame spoiler or just an unnecessarily deep reading of a throwaway scene? Let’s dive in.

If you can remember the beginning of Avengers: Infinity War, one of the first scenes features Tony Stark and Pepper Potts walking through the park. Tony mentions an extremely realistic dream he had where they have a child. Then Happy shows up, all hell breaks loose, and, well, you know the rest.

But back to that dream. Was it just Tony’s subconscious telling him he wants to have a child? Was it the Avengers script writers quickly setting up Iron Man’s personal stakes before sending him off into space to fight Thanos? Or was it a hint that maybe, just maybe, Tony’s dream is an actual vision of the future knocked loose by time travel.

Redditor u/ak2sup theorizes that Tony’s dream wasn’t a dream or even a vision, but a memory from the future. The only way he was able to see it was because of time travel that ultimately created a causal loop.

“[A] causal loop is a paradox of time travel that occurs when a future event is the cause of a past event, which in turn is the cause of the future event,” explains u/ak2sup.

So basically, Tony knows the future because he’s already seen it because the time travel in Avengers: Endgame created a ripple effect that sent certain memories back through time. Or maybe (and stay with me here), the version of Tony Stark we’re seeing in Infinity War actually came from the future, travelled back in time to stop Thanos, and ended up stuck in the past.

Before you respond that we’re reading to deep into a throwaway scene, remember that back in August, Avengers directors Joe and Anthony Russo responded to a fan question on Twitter by saying thatTony’s dream is “mysterious,” essentially confirming that there’s something important about those words.

This response only adds fuel to the theory that what Tony was seeing was his own future. During initial filming for Avengers: Endgame, set photos revealed two Tony Starks in one location, suggesting that he’ll travel back in time to meet his younger self.

So time travel is almost definitely happening, and that line from Infinity War proves that Tony Stark is aware of it, either directly or just subconsciously. Either way, it seems clear that before the Children of Thanos even show up, something is going on with Tony.

What that means exactly for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is unclear, but at the very least it would suggest that the time travel we’re all expecting to see in Avengers: Endgame could have even bigger reverberations across the universe than expected.

Undoing the Snap in Avengers: Endgame could lead to even more unforeseen consequences. It’s hard to imagine a future worse than the one created by Thanos in Infinity Way, but when it comes to time travel anything’s possible, right?

Avengers: Endgame is in theaters April 26, 2019.