Today saw the release of Avengers: Infinity War: The Cosmic Question Volume Two: Aftermath, the second half of a book series for younger readers that will be of interest to mature fans as well as it offers a clue as to what the world’s like following the harrowing events at the end of IW, with Thanos’ reality-warping finger snap halving the Earth’s population.
The novel follows two characters we haven’t seen in a while and reveals that they survived the Snap. Specifically, Thor‘s Erik Selvig and Darcy (though curiously, not Darcy’s boss Jane Foster). According to MCU Cosmic, the story sees Selvig and Darcy investigate what could be the cause of the tragedy that’s being called “the Decimation Event,” something they soon work out can be attributed to the Infinity Stones.
The blurb for Aftermath does a great job at summing up how the world’s coping after the loss of half of humanity as well. In short, not very well. See for yourself below:
We previously got a hint at the post-Snap world in the mid-credits scenes for Ant-Man and the Wasp, as it offered a different view of the big moment, with the Pyms being dusted while poor Scott Lang was marooned in the Quantum Realm. The credits stinger then saw a glimpse of a TV screen bearing a message that programming has been suspended due to “a state of emergency.”
Also, if you’re wondering whether the “new foe” mentioned in the blurb ties into Avengers 4, we can confirm this is not the case. The villain’s an original creation for the novel, a bad guy wielding a dangerous piece of tech created by Selvig. Besides, the book is said to be not totally cannon, but still closely connected to the MCU.
For our real first look at a post-Avengers: Infinity War world, we’ll just have to wait for that Avengers 4 trailer, which could be arriving tomorrow, later this week or next month. At this point, who knows?