MCU Phase 4: 'Marvel's What If...?' may add a twist to the 'Avengers' by introducing Thanos as the big bad instead of Loki
What if Loki (Tom Hiddleston) wasn't the primary antagonist in the 'Avengers'?
What if it was Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) who was enslaved by Loki instead of Clint Barton aka Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner)?
What if it was Thor who decided to push the nuke through the wormhole instead of Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.)?
And what if... there were more of such twisted and mind-numbing theories that Marvel would want us to view through the eyes of Uatu the Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) in their upcoming animated series,'Marvel's What If...?'
As far as the predictions go, it has been that sort of a series where just about anything in the MCU is possible. The above mentioned may not even be the ones that may happen and that's how secret the whole plotline is. Loki may have eventually died a hero, but he sure was a pain during the events of New York. Again, the world may thank him as he was partly responsible for the formation of the Avengers.
In one of the predictions, what if it wasn't Loki who called down the Chitauri and tried to decimate the planet? Our money then would be on Thanos. What if he made an appearance back then and left a mark for the Avengers saying he would be back, while Loki would have just been a messenger. Call it outlandish, but it is still a possibility.
Moving on to the second theory, controlling Nick Fury instead of Barton would have made life a lot more miserable for the Avengers as Loki would have then known every trick in the book that S.H.I.E.L.D. would have hid from the outside world. What if PHASE 2 could have come into play during the battle. It almost cost a life (literally) to close the wormhole and had Loki perhaps used the scepter on Fury, perhaps things may have ended differently for the Avengers.
Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark was never meant to be the man to be the sacrifice. However, he did so when he pushed the nuke through the wormhole. At this stage, all we knew was Thor (Chris Hemsworth) was the only Avenger who could have probably survived in outer space and what if it was him to nuke the rest of the Chitauri hovering around in space?
Again, some or none of these may or may not make sense at all. For all we know, Uatu might have an Avengers movie crossover plotline as well. How it pans out is anyone's guess.
'Marvel's What If...?' releases in 2021.