While Marvel tends to plan future movies to excruciating detail, there’s always a sense of creative freedom for directors and writers who come in to helm these projects, which allows them to tell their own stories. Namely, The Winter Soldier is a prime example of this, with Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely taking bold steps to renovate the narrative and bring change to the MCU. And yet, fans have found another inadvertent detail in the first Avengers film which might hint at HYDRA’s S.H.I.E.L.D. infiltration.
This new theory, which is going viral on Reddit, suggests that the Security Council’s decision to nuke New York, a strange and controversial action in and of itself even as a desperate measure, was orchestrated by Alexander Pierce and other secret HYDRA leaders. Think about it; the detonation would almost certainly kill Iron Man, Hawkeye, Black Widow and Captain America. That’s basically 4 out of the 6 Avengers, not to mention both leaders, Steve and Tony. This would remove all the obstacles standing in the way of HYDRA and global domination.
The Reddit user also points out that the explosion would kill several other threats as identified by Zola’s algorithm in The Winter Soldier, including Doctor Stephen Strange. So, considering that HYDRA even eliminated Nick Fury at the beginning of the movie, who would be left to stand up to them?
Additionally, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has already established that one of the members of the Security Council, Gideon Malick, was a HYDRA loyalist and helped the group bring the villainous Hive to Earth.
We’ll never know if Marvel actually planned this by including the missile scene in the first Avengers movie or if it merely served as a convenient MacGuffin for the plot, but one thing’s certain; the evidence is really compelling.
Tell us, though, what do you think about this new theory? Sound off with your thoughts in the usual place below.