Avengers 4 Theory: How Memory, B.A.R.F. And The Quantum Realm Explain Time Travel

4. The Importance Of Memory

The MCU has some serious baggage. There's not a single character among the survivors (at least in terms of the key cast - and not Rhodey, Okoye and M'Baku for now) who wasn't in some way hugely shaped by traumatic past events. Consider Tony Stark, who Thanos said was "haunted by knowledge" and who hints in Captain America: Civil War that the last memory he has of his parents stays with him endlessly. He is a man warped by his past experiences and the events of his parents life.

And he's not alone: Scarlet Witch has her parents' deaths, Cap has everything he lost when he was frozen, Hulk has past losses of control, Thor has his father's sins (some of which already manifested as Hela) and then his own past mistakes and fear of unworthiness, Ant-Man was a criminal and lost his daughter, Black Widow has the Red Room, and she and Hawkeye also have their black ops past. Even Thanos has the memory of Titan's fall... and Rocket and Nebula have the trauma of past experimentations and torture.

Each character is fundamentally shaped by these traumatic memories and a desire in every case to CHANGE them through their future action. Stark wants to save the world because he couldn't save his parents (or his company's victims), Scarlet Witch wants to save the world so there are no more victims like her, Thor wants to prove himself worthy because he wants to not be what his father was, Cap wants to feel at home and cast off his ghosts (likewise Rocket) and Black Widow wants to atone for the "red in her ledger." Hawkeye's trauma is very probably yet to come, if the rumours of him becoming Ronin are true.

Traumatic memories inform all of their charactersation in some way. And that could be why the Russos have already hinted that a specific piece of technology might be so key.