A new fan theory suggests an Easter egg is hidden Captain America: Civil War that might reveal precisely what year the upcoming Captain Marvel is set.
Long ago confirmed to take place in the 1990s, well before the debut of Tony Stark as Iron Man, Captain Marvel is a Marvel Cinematic Universe prequel that's left fans searching for possible clues seeded in previous films. Redditor Captaindeadpool172 may have just found one with a new observation from a scene in 2016's Civil War that's slipped under the radar.
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When he meets Peter Parker (Tom Holland) for the first time, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) pulls up a video of Spider-Man in action, which the teen unconvincingly dismisses as fake. Tony replies, "Oh, you mean like those UFOs over Phoenix?" before discovering the hiding place for Peter's rudimentary Spider-Man costume.
The Phoenix Lights were an actual phenomenon in 1997, when bright lights were observed in the skies over Phoenix, Arizona. Some people claim they were the work of aliens.
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The Reddit post suggests that within the MCU, the “Phoenix Lights” could have been the result of a battle between the Kree and the Skrulls. The timing of it works, too, with Captain Marvel returning to Earth in the 1990s to help stop the Kree-Skrull War from enveloping the planet as well.
Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck from a script they wrote with Liz Flahive, Carly Mensch, Meg LeFauve, Nicole Perlman and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Captain Marvel stars Brie Larson as Carol Danvers, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Jude Law as Mar-Vell, Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson, Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser, Djimon Hounsou as Korath the Pursuer, Gemma Chan as Minn-Erva, Ben Mendelsohn as Talos, and Lashana Lynch as Maria Rambeau. The film arrives on March 8, 2019.