Avengers: Infinity War directors Joe and Anthony Russo confirm there will be no alternate realities in Infinity War or Avengers 4. Marvel Studios has devoted so much effort to keeping plot details of the film tightly under wraps. This, in turn, resulted in fans obsessively theorizing about what goes down in the twin Avengers sequels, piecing together trailer footage, comments from everyone involved, as well as leaked set photos. Among the plethora of speculations rounding the film, one particular one has gained traction over the last several days and it involves the possibility of introducing alternate realities.

It’s not necessarily far-fetched considering that separate timelines have been used in comics books for many decades as it allows writers to venture out of the existing canon to offer readers new and fresh narratives. And since Marvel Studios’ chairman Kevin Feige has always mined great ideas from their print source, the concept might very well be introduced via Avengers 3 and 4. However, directors Joe and Anthony Russo have come out and straightforwardly denied that such scheme would be part of the forthcoming story.

Sitting down with Screen Rant during the press junket for Infinity War, the Russos confirmed that Avengers 3 and its still-untitled sequel won’t feature alternate realities. That means that whatever fans see on the film is legitimately part of the MCU’s canon. This way, the film preserves its integrity and won’t feel like it’d be a cop-out.

Cool as it may be, it’s arguably best not to introduce several versions of reality in Infinity War or its follow-up. The films are packed as they are with countless moving pieces that need to tell a cohesive story. Throwing a huge concept into the mix will definitely disrupt the narrative flow and chances are that it could be very confusing, even for fans. Further, it feels like the introduction of that possibility will only undermine the “culmination” that Marvel Studios has been building on for years considering that everything that has been leading up to these films can potentially just be conveniently useless depending on how it fits in the so-called alternative reality.

Joe Russo: There’s no ‘What If’ scenarios. Everything that happens in these movies, happens in these movies. There’s not like, you know, some potential, a tangential reality. It doesn’t affect the story. It’s if it happens, it happens. We wanted to commit to the storytelling and the most complete way and not give ourselves any kind of, you know, potential, uh, outs, like, uh, it was all a reality dreams.

Anthony Russo:I think that’s because, you know because the stakes are so high in these films and we wanted to honor that he wanted to commit to those stakes.

Having said that, the possibility of time travel (which is another very popular theory) is still very much on the table, most likely happening in Avengers 4 considering a plethora of leaked set photos revealing the original Avengers members sporting their previous dos or even ensembles. While it’s currently unknown how exactly that pans out, fans will soon get a better picture of where the MCU is heading with Avengers: Infinity War only a few days away from hitting theaters.

MORE: Kevin Feige Amusingly Responds to James Cameron’s Superhero Criticisms

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