Captain America & Black Widow Enter Avengers: Infinity War After Brutal Period of Covert Avenging

About two weeks ago we wrote about how Captain America (Chris Evans) had formed a Secret Avengers in the wake of the Avengers-vs.-Avengers brawl in Captain America: Civil War. This bit of information came from a suite of new toys released ahead of Avengers: Infinity War, which included this bit: “Since opposing the Sokovia Accords, the super-soldier has remained under the radar while continuing to do what he believes is right—saving the world one clandestine mission at a time.”

The Sokovia Accords created the central conflict in Civil War. The accords, approved by 117 countries, looked to reign in the Avengers ability to wage unilateral mayhem by making them a public organization under the supervision of a United Nations panel. Cap wasn’t having it, while Tony Stark thought it made sense. Sides were taken, a massive fight took place between Team Cap and Team Iron Man, followed by a second and far more brutal, personal battle, with Cap and the Winter Soldier fighting an enraged Iron Man (Tony was shown a video that proved the Winter Soldier killed his parents), that resulted in the Avengers being broken apart.

In the time between Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, Cap, Black Widow, and Falcon have been running their Secret Avengers, while also no doubt nursing the psychological wounds from their intra-Avengers fighting. The result of all this has been particularly rough on Cap and Black Widow, leaving them in a precarious mental state as they re-emerge to face their ultimate test in Thanos in Infinity War.

In on-set conversations with i09, Chris Evans and Scarlet Johansson spoke about the toll these covert missions have taken on Cap and Black Widow, as well as how Thanos’s arrival in Infinity War has been the event the Avengers have all been dreading since their first scrape with intergalactic invaders in 2012’s The Avengers.

“They’ve kind of been flying under the radar but still taking care of business in the way they know how to do,” Johansson said to io9. “I think when you’re sort of fighting for something that you know is important, but is not being really recognized or supported by a larger organization or even like, society as a whole, I think it takes a certain toll, and you can get feelings about it in a way. So that’s kind of where we find them.”

This statement leads us to believe that the beef between Team Cap and Team Iron Man will not have been settled by the time Infinity War starts, even if a lot of the interpersonal fighting will have to be sidelined in order to face the universe-ending threat of Thanos. Johansson told io9 that all of those specific relationships that have formed over the past decade, including the potential romance between her and Bruce Banner(Mark Ruffalo), are understandably background to the larger story of Everyone-versus-Thanos.

Meanwhile, Chris Evans pointed out the team that eventually comes together in Infinity War aren’t, technically, the Avengers. Cap, Black Widow, War Machine (Don Cheadle), Bruce Banner, Falcon (Anthony Mackie) Scarlett Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) all arrive in Wakanda to ask T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) for help. Yet Evans had this to say about the group to i09:

“I don’t know if I would necessarily say that this is the group of Avengers. Just circumstances have dictated that we come together. There is no technical Avengers structure [but] I think [Cap] is still a leader at heart. I just don’t know if he necessarily has the same chain of command that he had in prior films.”

Another interesting point is how Evans says that ever since the events in the very first Avengers, the epic, potentially universe-ending Infinity War has been something every Avenger has worried about, even if they didn’t know Thanos’s name, let alone about his existence. Avengers ended with an epic battle between our heroes and an alien army nominally controlled by Loki (Tom Hiddleston). The fact that aliens could arrive on Earth in battle mode told Cap and the assembled Avengers everything they needed to know about how precarious their situation really was:

“I think, [to] some degree, it’s probably [our] worst fears come to reality,” Evans said to i09. “I think the first time the sky opens up and aliens pour into the city, you kind of realize, ‘Well that’s a possibility, and we handled it this time, but who knows how powerful these people can become?’ And I think this is kind of a worst-case scenario where you find out all the potential of someone trying to destroy your planet can be.”

We’ll find out how close Thanos comes to destroying everything, including our Avengers and their friends, on April 27. From what we learned in the final trailer, this first film in the two-part series looks very, very rough for our heroes.

Featured image: Marvel Studios’ AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR. L to R: Okoye (Danai Gurira), Black Panther/T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff (Scarlet Johansson) and Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan)..Photo: Chuck Zlotnick. ©Marvel Studios 2018