11 Bonkers Theories About 2019’s Movies That Surely Can’t Be True

2. Doctor Strange Tricked Thanos With A Time Loop - Avengers 4

Everyone and their aunt has a theory about what might happen in Avengers 4, and though it's widely expected that time travel will take place and the mainline Avengers may end up laying down their lives to save the new heroes, this brilliantly bonkers theory has a different take.

The theory states that Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) saw the snap happen in every single possible universe, and it's actually a necessary action, because to defeat Thanos, Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) has to end up trapped in the quantum realm. This would then force him to learn how time vortexes work in order to escape, which will become a form of time travel for the Avengers.

The big surprise, however, is that Strange cast a time loop spell on the Time Stone, which will eventually loop back around to before the snap. This would give the Avengers a single chance to time travel out of the loop, travel to the past to steal the Infinity Stones and create a new gauntlet.

As Thanos chases them through time, both the Mad Titan and the Avengers try to avoid altering history as much as possible for fear of derailing their plans, and when the time loop again resets, the stage is set for a final battle for all the marbles, where failure could result in the destruction of the universe as we know it.

The main issue working against this is that it's probably too complex for a mainstream blockbuster aiming for $2+ billion at the box office, even if it's smart and places some sensible constraints on the potential logic-breaking nature of time travel narratives.