Summary
- Fans question how Thanos could’ve been defeated differently, with the ‘Thanus’ theory of Ant-Man shrinking and entering him.
- Despite possibilities, defeating Thanos through rectal invasion would have cheapened years of character development.
- The MCU likely won’t revise Thanos’ death, and Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom won’t undermine the Infinity Saga.
Avengers: Endgame saw the first saga of the Marvel Cinematic Universe come to a conclusive end, with the franchise losing its greatest hero to rid the universe of its greatest villain. Since then, fans have looked for other ways out, and one in particular is unfortunately more memorable than others.
The Avengers faced off against many villains over the course of the Infinity Saga, all leading to the reveal of Thanos. With a plan to save the universe by killing half of it off, he was the ultimate threat to everything that the heroes stood for. Thanks to his immense strength and the power of the infinity stones, the villain even managed to pull off his plan at the end of Avengers: Infinity War, weathering a fatal blow from Thor while mocking the Asgardian. In Endgame, Thanos was finally defeated in a climax that was originally set to see all the original Avengers die, with the final cut seeing Iron Man make the ultimate sacrifice alone.
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After several acts of villainy, killing Thanos became a necessary task that Dave Bautista has expressed disappointment didn’t fall to his Drax to finish. While Drax didn’t have too many opportunities, the same can’t be said for others. Whereas Thanos chided Thor for not making his killing strike a headshot at the climax of Infinity War, fans have had criticism for other members of the Avengers coalition, most notably Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man. Thanks to the maturely named ‘Thanus’ fan theory, Rudd has been criticised for not simply shrinking himself down to an appropriate size and invading Thanos’ innards through the rectum before entering his Giant form, a move that fans say would have ended the villain in one go. When Comicbook posed the question to Rudd in a recent interview, the actor revealed that he’d actually given it some thought. “I often wonder, though, could he really have stopped Thanos in that way? Because didn’t he, at that point, have the Space Stone or whatever?” Rudd is right, as there are a hundred ways this plan would go belly up fast. With even the Falcon’s earth-based tech able to track Ant-Man’s miniature form and the power of most of the Infinity Stones well in hand, Thanos wouldn’t fall so easily to a wisecracking rectal pill.
Even if this had worked, it would have been the worst end to a well-developed villain in cinema history, trading off years of build and real loss for a cheap gag. This would probably qualify as the worst possible consideration for Thanos across the board. However, Bautista and Rudd aren’t the only ones still pondering the method of Thanos’s demise after the fact. The idea is so prevalent that it’s even come up in discussions surrounding the franchise’s future endeavors. It’s been rumored that the MCU’s next big bad will take out the Mad Titan to establish himself as a threat. While this has actually been done in the comics to great effect (and multiple times under the What If…? banner with absolutely no meaning whatsoever), the MCU’s Thanos is worth a lot more to the franchise with his legacy intact. It’s pretty much guaranteed that Robert Downey Jr.’s incoming Doctor Doom could find some other way to make his presence felt without undermining the Avengers’ costly final victory at the climax of the Infinity Saga.
After the last attempt to replace him, it’s clear as day that Thanos was a better MCU villain than Kang would have been, and that’s a high bar that Doom won’t surpass just by killing an alternate version of the character. Fans can agree that the events of the Infinity Saga were the best outcome, and they should be left in the past with no revisions and no efforts to undermine them. With Rudd still willing and able to return, there’s still a chance he’ll get to do more against the next big bad, but it’s pretty much guaranteed it won’t be through the back end.
The Avengers films are available to stream on Disney+.
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Source: Comicbook