Avengers: Endgame
is out on digital and Blu-ray, giving fans the chance to watch the film much more closely after having seen it in theaters. With the remote or mouse close by, you can freeze all those frames that contain too much action to fully capture in cinemas. Now that you know what happens in Avengers 4, you can focus on all the tiny details that Marvel inserted in the story along the way without worrying about the emotional ride. Just last week we found out there’s a puzzling Easter egg in one of the scenes that you couldn’t possibly have caught in a theater, as well as a clever one that you might not even see even after freezing the correct frame. But you know which Easter egg we didn’t miss in Endgame? Nova. Because it’s not actually there.
Anthony and Joe Russo, the brothers who directed four of Marvel’s most important films from the Infinity Saga including the last two Captain America and the last two Avengers films, joined Wired to answer several questions from fans about Infinity War and Endgame. The clip is nearly 13-minutes long, and it’s worth watching because it explains some of the concepts used in Infinity War and Endgame, with particular emphasis on the latter.
Right near the end of the clip, the Russos field a question from a fan who asks whether Nova is fighting Thanos in that epic finale. That’s when the duo troll fans massively, advising everyone to “look closely at that scene again, and you’ll see Richard Rider in the shot.” After all, Howard the Duck was spotted coming out of a portal, so why wouldn’t Nova also be there also? He’d definitely have a score to settle with Thanos.
The internet exploded as a result, but it quickly turned out that this wasn’t the super exciting Endgame Easter egg that everyone was hoping for. Instead, the Russos were trolling all of us, as they’ve done many times in the past. The directors have since confirmed to ComicBook that there’s no Nova Easter egg in Endgame. “That was actually a joke on our part,” they said.
That doesn’t mean Nova will always be left out of the MCU in the future, and once that happens, they may even explain what he was up to at the time of that epic battle in Endgame. We may find out that he was involved in it all along, but it all happened offscreen. For the time being, the official answer from two of the most successful Marvel directors is pretty clear. There’s no Nova in Endgame, and that should settle the matter.
It’s unclear when Nova will be introduced to the MCU, though Kevin Feige did say last year that Nova was part of the earliest drafts of Guardians of the Galaxy. But considering what we know about Marvel’s Phase 4 of the MCU, Nova’s introduction is still several years away at a minimum, assuming Marvel does go forward with the character. Wired’s Q&A session with the Russos follows below.
