There’s still a ton we don’t know about “Avengers: Infinity War,” though we do know a lot of the basics. The trailers and TV spots so far have given us pretty extensive looks at several huge, distinct sequences — the battle in New York involving Spider-Man, Iron Man and Doctor Strange; the battle in Wakanda involving Captain America, Black Widow, Bucky, War Machine, Falcon, the entire cast of “Black Panther” and probably the Hulk; the battle on Titan involving the Guardians of the Galaxy, Iron Man and Doctor Strange; and the sequence that follows directly from “Thor: Ragnarok” that sends him into space where he meets the Guardians of the Galaxy and they go on some kind of adventure.
But through all of the ads so far, there have been a few random snippets that don’t fit with any of those big set pieces. That’s to be expected, because the whole movie probably isn’t going to be action scenes. And there almost certainly are some very important pieces they’re holding back, because this is one of the biggest events in movie history and Marvel won’t want to give away the game too early.
This new TV spot that Marvel released on Saturday morning — which you can and should watch in the embed above — provides a couple more of those extra snippets, showing off two brief looks at an action sequence that is distinct from any of the others seen in previous ads. It’s a part of the movie that we have seen shots from in the other trailers, but didn’t see enough to fully separate it from the established locations and distinct it from the other big battles. But now we have.
The most important shot here is so quick that you probably missed it. We even had to look at it a couple times to realize what we were seeing. It happens so fast and, YouTube’s video compression being what it is, it’s hard to get a clean screenshot of it, but it happens at the 56-second mark and looks like this:
What you’re looking at above is Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) fighting baddie Proxima Midnight. And, as a bonus, that would appear to be Vision’s (Paul Bettany) laser on the left blowing stuff up. But what’s really interesting to me is the background.
That’s a distinctly European location, definitely not Wakanda and probably not New York. Which means this sequence is a wholly separate fight from the other big battles we’ve seen. And it involves several of our heroes. Another shot from this same fight but from inside the building came earlier in the spot, with Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson). Likewise, it was a quick enough cut that it’s hard to get a quality screenshot, but it’s this:
The real world location where that was shot is Waverley Station in Edinburgh, Scotland, and the external shot above is in the street near the station. That obviously doesn’t mean the sequence is taking place in Scotland, but since they built sets at Pinewood Atlanta for New York, and then also actually shot in Queens for a bit, they probably aren’t trying to pass off Scotland for NYC.
In any case, there’s a lot going on in this sequence, based on shots from the other trailers that we’ve been able to connect with it. For one thing, we can also place Captain America (Chris Evans) here with a reasonable amount of certainty because in the first trailer released back in November, there’s a shot of Proxima Midnight chucking a spear at him and him catching it in front of a wall that is architecturally very similar to the shots above. There aren’t a lot of shots that take place on Earth at night in any of the trailers, so that one in particular stands out as being a part of this, considering Proxima Midnight’s apparent involvement.
In addition to the sequences that have gotten tons of play time in the various trailers — Wakanda, Titan, New York and whatever Thor and the Guardians are doing in space — we also have this other big sequence that would appear to involve at least Scarlet Witch, Vision, Black Widow and Captain America. It may also be the sequence that has that big shot from the first trailer in which some bad guy thrusts a scepter into Vision’s forehead to try to steal the Mind Stone. That part also takes place at night on Earth and on a street that is wet just like in the first shot above (though it’s tough to make out any background details to know for sure if it’s the same location).
Where this takes place in the movie is anyone’s guess. But if Proxima Midnight manages to successfully steal the Mind Stone, it would have to be after Wakanda, because the “Infinity War” Super Bowl spot places him there. That, coupled with Shuri’s hologram of Vision’s head in the second trailer, would indicate that battle is happening to defend Vision from being taken. If this new fight ends with an Avengers victory, then it could take place earlier.
Only a few more weeks until we find out for sure!