#gotg3 speculation

I searched and found this video:

*Warning: Contains Loki's death scene. Like a lot if it. Don't watch if it makes you upset.*

***This post contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Far From Home and speculation for the Black Widow movie***

That IS the best case scenario!

My conspiracy theory is as follows:

The after-movie scenes have always been for reasonably soon movies. I think the one that went farthest ahead was Avengers (2012) mid-credits, where Thanos was set-up for GOTG (2014). So we have to figure Nick in space- presumably working with SWORD- is setting up something for the next 2-3 years at most.

Out of the movies that we know they’ve started doing preparation on (meaning, not Captain Marvel 2 yet):

Eternals is god-tier stuff, so they’re probably not going to be working with earth bureaucracy.

Shang-Chi is street-level, not space.

Dr Strange is magic, not space.

Black Panther could absolutely go to space, but why would Wakandans want to work with America’s subpar tech?

Which leaves Black Widow and GOTG3.

It could be GOTG3! But given the firing and re-hiring of James Gunn, that’s way in the future, and would be even farther out than introducing Thanos had been, and he was the main threat of the entire Infinity Saga.

Natasha is in space, and using SWORD to find her would be a way for them to open up the MCU for larger cosmic threats by using a street-level character as their entry point.

While I’m currently super excited to dive in to thinking about the post-Civil War timeline for the Black Widow movie (remember that less than a month ago, the argument was mostly pre-IM2 vs post-Endgame, and this is EXPONENTIALLY better), I’m not giving up my speculation that they’ll find some way to bring Natasha back to life. Because I have ten more months where it’s still possible it might happen.

And if it doesn’t, I’ll spend a few years waiting for GOTG3, to see how they’ll rescue Real!Gamora.

And if they don’t do THAT? Well, then, I’ll keep looking for other ways.

Because I’m still really upset with how Endgame ended- not just that Natasha died, but that they established in interviews that both Nat and Gamora (and presumably any other soul stone sacrifice) is trapped there forever. Canon as is says that neither of them gets to be at peace, and seeing the characters in other movies as their younger selves should make up for the way that the versions we got to know and care about are permanently trapped- this, after Tony’s death scene specifically included Pepper promising him he could finally rest.

I am fairly notoriously bad at speculation. I’m pretty good at analysis, and at reading character arcs that have happened thus far and retroactively finding links in them, but I have never pretended to be good at figuring out what comes next. But I’d rather speculate and be wrong, and KEEP speculating and KEEP being wrong (often in the exact same ways), than just accept that nothing’s going to fix how Gamora and Natasha went out.

I don’t want my weekend excitement over what we do know to somehow indicate that I am now off my bullshit and accepting things won’t change. Fandom is all about refusing to accept things that we don’t like, and also this is goddamn comics canon, where the last time Nat died she was brought back as a clone by a psychic bear. I don’t actually expect more movies with Nat; I just want her alive and okay and able to rest off-screen.