12 Marvel Cinematic Universe Easter Eggs Phase 3 Needs

4. The Next Big Bad Foreshadowing

Just as seeing Earth's Mightiest Heroes team up was treated as the culmination of the Marvel Cinematic Universe up to that point, so too is Infinity War now viewed as what everything has been building to. Thanos was teased at the end of The Avengers, his plot to acquire the Infinity Stones has been overtly seeded throughout Phase 2 and it's only going to get more intense as we barrel through Phase 3 to what's shaping up to the big finale to end all big finales. Except it won't be. There's already a movie scheduled for after the epic two-part Infinity War and everyone involved, from Bob Iger to the supporting actors, has made clear the MCU has much more life in it. The problem Marvel face, then, is that they've engineered a situation where they're only thinking as far ahead as the next big thing - fine when the number of movies is in single digits, but if they're wanting people engaging well into the 2020s there needs to be more than just a run of isolated events; they need to start building to the future now. You can't just have the next big bad (I'd love Galactus, but that'll take some contract wrangling) turn and smile at the camera once Thanos is defeated. So there needs to be some teasing of them now. How that's done depends entirely on what that threat is.