Where Are the Heroes in the MCU Building up to 'Avengers: Infinity War'?

by Henry Percival

The 19th installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is quickly approaching, with April 26th marking the release of the highly anticipated 3rd Avengers film, titled Infinity War. This 19th film will be the climax of everything that Marvel has been leading up to since the release of the first Iron Man film back in 2008. 18 films leading up to one two-part climax means that there is a large character scope, and as followers of the MCU will know, this is true. So where exactly are all of the characters in the MCU in the build up to Infinity War? For this article, I will only be including characters in movie adaptation, not characters from MCU TV series, such as Daredevil and Jessica Jones (the only two worth watching).

*For this part of the article, characters being talked about will appear in bold font, whilst their last movie appearance will be in italics*

First, we’ll start where it all kicked off for the MCU: Iron Man (Tony Stark). The last the saw of the “genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist” Tony Stark, was in Spiderman: Homecoming. Here he was mentoring the young Peter Parker, so that he would fit into his New Avengers team, following the split of the team in Captain America: Civil War. The last we saw of Stark he was headed into a news conference, after having his invitation to Spiderman to join the Avengers declined.

Next, we’ll start with my personal favourite character in the MCU, Captain America (Steve Rogers). The last cap outing we had was Captain America: Civil War, where the title character clashed with Iron Man over whether the Avengers should work for the United Nations, or be a solo team. The film ends with the star spangled man, dropping his iconic shield, thus giving up his role as Captain America, and breaking his fellow rebel Avengers out of a maximum security ocean prison.

We’ll finish the big four Avengers in this paragraph. The last we saw of Thor and The Incredible Hulk was in Thor: Ragnarok. We last saw them on a massive spaceship, facing Earth, before a mammoth ship dwarfs theirs. This ship is set to be commanded by the villain for Infinity War, Thanos (although the last we actually saw of Thanos was a mid-credits scene in Avengers: Age of Ultron). On the same ship as Thor and the Hulk is the adoptive brother of Thor, Loki. The Avengers first villain is set to have a big role in the upcoming film.

The latest MCU blockbuster to hit the big screen was Black Panther, and the hero of the film had the same name funnily enough. It is safe to presume that T’Challa will be in his country of Wakanda, where he is king. T’Challa wasn’t the only big name hero to appear in this film however. Bucky Barnes or the Winter Soldier (not really sure what he goes by now following the events in Civil War) emerged from a cryotube in the post credits scene. He was placed in cryosleep at the end of Captain America: Civil War so that Wakandan doctors could stop the brainwashing that he experienced whilst being a Soviet assassin.

While we are on the topic of Soviets and assassins, we will see our next two MCU heroes: Black Widow and Hawkeye. Black Widow is currently on the run from the US government, after allowing Captain America to get away in Captain America: Civil War. Hawkeye is in the same predicament, following him being broken out of super prison at the very end of the same movie. Whether the two characters are together however, I do not know.