Marvel Studios’ Phase 7 now has the perfect opportunity to bring back Thanos, the villain who defined an entire era of the MCU. Josh Brolin’s Mad Titan died twice in Avengers: Endgame, first when Thor took his head in the film’s opening minutes and again when Tony Stark’s snap erased his 2014 self. Since then, the character only appeared in animation, with Brolin voicing Variants of the conqueror in What If…? while Marvel Zombies also featured the villain.
Marvel's upcoming Nova movie, a flagship film for the MCU's Phase 7, presents the perfect opportunity to see Thanos return in live-action. Deadline reported that Loki creator Michael Waldron signed on to write the project as a movie instead of a Disney+ series, with the chance to direct as well if his script moves forward.
Nova remains in early development without a release date, which points toward Phase 7 once Avengers: Secret Wars closes the Multiverse Saga in December 2027. A cosmic origin story on this scale gives Marvel Studios a natural way to put Thanos back on the big screen.
Richard Rider, the most famous Nova in Marvel Comics, serves in the Nova Corps, the intergalactic police force headquartered on the planet Xandar. The MCU introduced the Corps in Guardians of the Galaxy, where Glenn Close’s Nova Prime and John C. Reilly’s Rhomann Dey helped the Guardians stop Ronan the Accuser and then locked the Power Stone away in their vault.
That vault sealed Xandar’s fate. Avengers: Infinity War opens after Thanos already ripped the Stone from the planet, with Thor telling the Guardians that the Mad Titan decimated Xandar. The attack never appeared on screen, which makes it one of the biggest unseen moments in the entire Infinity Saga.
A Nova movie can finally show it. In the comics, Rider became the last surviving member of the Nova Corps after an alien armada destroyed Xandar during the Annihilation event, and he absorbed the entire Nova Force as a result. Waldron’s film could adapt that origin by opening with a long overdue flashback to Thanos' assault, portraying the massacre Infinity War skipped and leaving Rider as the sole survivor who inherits the full power of the Corps.
Brolin, for his part, sounds more than ready to reprise the role. The actor addressed a potential Thanos comeback on the Happy Sad Confused podcast in August 2025, and his answer left no doubt about his interest. Brolin said he would be there "tomorrow" if Marvel made the call:
"The Thanos thing, if they called me in London right now, and said, 'Let’s do this,' I’d be like, ‘I’ll be there tomorrow.’"
He doubled down on this in November that year while speaking to Entertainment Tonight, saying he "might acquiesce" if Avengers: Doomsday director Joe Russo approached him with an idea, then teasing that Russo "may have" done so already.
Will Marvel Studios Actually Put Thanos in Nova?
A Thanos comeback in Nova looks more plausible than most return scenarios floating around the MCU, though nobody should call it a lock. A flashback needs no resurrection and no multiverse loophole, since the scene would unfold before Infinity War begins. Marvel gets the shock of the Mad Titan on-screen without touching the ending of Endgame, which Kevin Feige obviously sees as sacred ground.
The bigger obstacles are the practical ones. Waldron is writing a brand-new pitch, so nothing about the story is locked, and the studio could decide the origin works better told through dialogue than through an expensive battle sequence. Thanos is a fully digital character, and rendering him for even one scene costs serious money at a time when Marvel keeps trimming budgets across its slate.
There's a chance Thanos' next live-action appearance might happen before Nova, though. Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars hit theaters well before Nova arrives, and speculation continues to swirl that the Russo brothers might use Thanos first. If the villain already returned in one of those crossovers, a Nova flashback would lose some of its surprise, though it would still deepen his shadow over the cosmic side of the franchise.
Still, if Marvel Studios ever planned to depict Xandar’s fall, this is the project where it happens. Brolin wants back in, and no other announced film holds a stronger reason to feature the conqueror. Also, the sequence of Xandar's destruction was actually filmed during Infinity War, only that it was cut from the film. Bringing it back as a flashback scene shouldn’t be too big a hurdle.
Geraldo Amartey is a writer at The Direct. He joined the team in 2025, bringing with him four years of experience covering entertainment news, pop culture, and fan-favorite franchises for sites like YEN, Briefly and Tuko.
