What Does The Ending Of Captain America: Civil War Really Mean?

What Does The Ending Mean For Phase 3?

As the end of Civil War has a pretty seismic effect on the Avengers status quo, what does that mean for the MCU as it moves forward into Phase 3? Well, perhaps not as much as you might expect.

Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 and Thor: Ragnarok take place in other worlds/realms and Doctor Strange appears to be rather self-contained. Spider-Man and Black Panther will continue their respective threads (which I promise I'll get to) and may be somewhat impacted by this change-up, but for all intents and purposes they too will be stand-alone.

That means the film where we'll see this dual Avengers deal pay-off will, most probably, be Avengers: Infinity War. That makes a lot of sense given the Russos are already developing the story for that, able to build straight off what they've done here.

None of this is to say Civil War is light on foreshadowing. There's lots of allusions to the wider world in here (and plenty more things that can be read into) - Vision talks of leaning about his Infinity Stone head, Ross comments on the absence of Thor and Hulk and many more (keep an eye for a whole article looking at that in the coming days).