'Avengers: Endgame' Easter Egg Confirms a Huge Time Travel Theory

When the Avengers split up in Endgame to collect the Infinity Stones, Thor and Rocket were sent back to Asgard during the events of Thor: The Dark World to extract the Aether (aka, the Reality Stone) from Jane Foster. However, new evidence seems to confirm the movie almost sent this dynamic duo to a very different time and place as part of Avengers: Endgame’s time heist.

The latest clue comes from a screenshot of Avengers: Endgame. Specifically, it’s the scene where the heroes brief each other on the various Infinity Stones. When Thor gets up to talk about the Reality Stone it’s played for comic relief, but if you look closely there’s a major Easter egg onscreen. Now that the movie’s available to own, that Easter egg has been spotted by redditor u/Teja-Stark.

On the holographic screens behind Thor, you can clearly see various details about the Aether that contained the Reality Stone throughout most of the Marvel movies. The screen on the left, in particular, seems to be detailing the stone’s history and its role in an ancient battle between Asgard and the Dark Elves: the First Battle of Svartalfheim, which occurred in the year 2988 B.C. in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

And this isn’t the last time we see this date pop-up in Avengers: Endgame. Later in the movie, when evil Nebula from 2014 hijacks the time machine to bring past-Thanos into the present, we get a glimpse of the control panel and the same date is clearly visible. So what does it mean?

In case you’re not up on your Asgardian history, the First Battle of Svartalfheim was an epic fight between the Dark Elves (led by Malekith) and the Asgardians (led by Thor’s grandfather, Bor). Malekith planned to use the Aether to destroy all other life in the Nine Realms, but Bor managed to stop him by transporting the Infinity Stone back to Asgard using the Bifrost.

So, in theory, it’s possible that the Avengers considered sending Thor and Rocket to 2988 B.C. to steal the Reality Stone before settling on the more recent events of Thor: The Dark World. The fact that we see the same date both when the Avengers are planning their Time Heist and on the time machine’s control panel later in the film suggests they really did consider this option, even punching it into the device before changing course.

What would the movie have been like if Thor and Rocket traveled to 2988 B.C. instead? We may never know, but with Loki set to get his own time-traveling series on Disney+, we may get a fresh look at the First Battle of Svartalfheim before too long.

Avengers: Endgame is available to own now.

Watch the the First Battle of Svartalfheim scene from Thor: The Dark World: