A series of toy leaks months ago revealed that several of the surviving Avengers would don matching white suits in Avengers: Endgame, similar to the armor that Hank Pym wore in Ant-Man and the Wasp to go to the Quantum Realm. Theories soon formed around those toys leaks, as fans expected the heroes to find a way to travel through time with the help of Scott Lang’s knowledge of Pym’s work and the Quantum Realm.
The Endgame directors then said in an interview that those toy leaks might not reflect the final version in the film, but that didn’t change the fact that both Lego and Hasbro had Avengers minifigs and figurines dressed up in Quantum Realm suits (that’s what we ended up calling them for lack of an official explanation). Soon after that, Marvel released new trailers and Endgame footage that showed several of the Avengers wearing the white outfits. And now we finally have an explanation about the new armor. Before we proceed, beware that some spoilers may follow below.
Marvel dropped an Endgame trailer featuring several of the Avengers wearing the white suits, including Captain America, Iron Man, Nebula, Hawkeye, Black Widow, and War Machine. At the time, I wondered how many of the Avengers would wear the new suits, thinking that Marvel may have altered those scenes to make it look as if more team members would embark on the same mission.
In a clip released a few days ago, we also got to see Rocket in the same white suit. In total, nine heroes would wear the uniforms, if the clip shows footage that will make it into the final cut of the film, which prompted us to speculate that one of them is Hulk/Professor Hulk.
But Marvel has never explained why they have the suits, and what purpose they serve. After all, the Avengers each have their own costume. Even though they’ve been fighting as a team for years, they’ve never had matching outfits. One reason for not having them all dressed in similar battle gear is that the heroes are much easier to identify visually because of their unique suits. You can tell them apart with ease no matter how complex the battle sequence is because each of them wears whatever he or she feels comfortable wearing in battle.
We’ve speculated for months now that, just as Hank and Ant-Man need suits to survive the trip to the Quantum Realm, every other Avenger who will join Lang will need similar protection. Some theories even speculated that the suits will let them survive in space, and they’re made of the same nanoparticles that Tony Stark uses for his Iron Man suit. The housing of these suits will be on the wrists of the surviving Avengers, these theories said, which would explain all those leaked photos from the Endgame set that showed several Avengers with an identical wearable parked on their wrists.
That’s all the unofficial information about the white suits that’s out there. But Marvel this week finally addressed the uniforms. It was Marvel boss Kevin Feige who addressed the new armor in an interview with io9.
“We call them the team suits,” Feige said. “And we early on decided [revealing them] was a big differentiating factor between [Endgame] and the other films. The Avengers have never had matching outfits before, [so] we thought it was a very intriguing image to see something that made this film feel new.”
Feige said that Marvel and Disney’s marketing issues weren’t just about hiding spoilers, but also about making sure the audience knows Endgame isn’t Infinity War 2, but a standalone movie. The suits helped with that.
“[We had to] make it feel more than just Infinity War II. Because it’s not,” he said. “Those team suits add something fresh to it. As does Hawkeye, as does Captain Marvel. As does Scott Lang.”
The fact that the surviving Avengers will wear the same suits does send a powerful message. Whatever happened between them, they’re ready to put their differences aside and work as a team to defeat the most significant threat they’ve encountered so far.
Seeing Tony and Steve rocking the team suits in various scenes is a signal that the moment we’ve been dying to see since Civil War is coming soon. The two Avengers leaders will meet for the first time in years and make up.
The purpose of the suits isn’t just to let the audience know that Endgame is a new movie, or that the Avengers have grown a lot as a team since the original movie. It’s also functional armor. As expected, Feige didn’t address that in the interview. We’re probably going to have to wait until April 26th to learn exactly what the suits do and why Stark created them. And Stark wouldn’t just create these matching suits without having some solid reasons to do it.
How many of the Avengers will wear them while going back in time via the Quantum Realm? Up to nine, if the latest TV spot is accurate, although the clips may be misleading. The Russo brothers confirmed more than once that their trailers mislead the audience on purpose, to protect the plot. With that in mind, Joe Russo also addressed the team suits in the same interview, although he shared even less information about them. “Obviously anything that goes into the trailers is really well considered,” he said. “And whatever people want to take away from that they can take away from that.”
The main takeaway from Feige’s revelations is that the suits are real, they’re called the team suits, and we’re going to see them in the film.
