The Mystery Behind ‘Avengers 4’ Title Has “Backfired”

For everyone who has spent months trying to work out the mystery behind the title for Avengers 4, perhaps you’re just overthinking it. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige revealed as much while discussing this week’s Avengers: Infinity War.

While Avengers 4 was initially titled Avengers: Infinity War Part 2, the movie lost that moniker in July 2016, becoming simply Untitled Avengers 4. Explaining the change, directors Joe and Anthony Russo said the two movies were no longer as closely linked as they had been, and additionally, Feige apparently confirmed in an interview, the new title was a spoiler for Infinity War.

It was a comment that launched endless speculation, something that Feige now appears to regret. “I’ve said before, it’s gotten entirely out of hand. And now we will have no chance to live up to any expectations of what it’s gonna be,” he told IGN. “It sort of backfired, if I’m honest with you, because the notion was to not talk about it so the focus was to be on [Infinity War].”

The reticence, he explained, was born of the experience of having revealed the Infinity War title before the second Avengers movie, Avengers: Age of Ultron, had been released.

“I think there was a slight notion of — Ultron hadn’t come out at that point, and I felt a tiny little sense of, ‘Well, gosh, we’ve gotta talk about the movies we have coming out next, because that’s what we’ve been working so hard on and that’s what’s next available for our audience to see,’ but when we talk that far ahead, that took a lot of attention out,” he explained.

So, now you know. The next Avengers movie will be called Avengers: Go See Ant-Man and the Wasp and Captain Marvel First.

Avengers: Infinity War will be in theaters Friday.