So where were SHIELD and The Avengers during Iron Man 3? Marc ponders this… a little too much

Ok, so the whole time while I watched Iron Man 3 – and i’ll stay spoiler-free here –  I was thinking to myself ‘this is awesome’. Then after I came out of it I thought ‘Hold on, where were the Avengers or SHIELD?’ because (not a spoiler) Tony Stark gets a pretty rough time in this movie and fights an adversary who touches on superhuman.

I’ll not lie, I know in the comics the characters all have their standalone stories and only ‘assemble’ from time to time, but I thought it was unusual, given how Fury popped up in Iron Man 2 every time Stark so much as stubbed his toe.

But then, this evening I was chatting to my good friend Ronald Nichols, the guy behind BoxOfficeBuz (give them a like, they rock), and I was thinking about a few things.

We, the fans, have been told that it will be explained why Stark is alone in this movie, but it wasn’t.

So now I’m thinking it’ll be explained in one of the other movies… is this why we see the news footage before (no spoilers, I promise) the attack on Stark’s home? So this footage can pop up in one/some of the other Avengers Phase 2 movies? You know, Capt is about to thump some evil-doers in a bar when he glances quickly at the TV screen as the announcer says something like ‘Tony Stark is believed dead after… blah blah blah’.

So ok, that works.

But then I go thinking about when Iron Man 3 takes place (very minor spoiler), yes at Christmas time. And what is so significant about Christmas I hear you ask as this article starts to bore you into nodding off, well if they want to explain why none of the others help out, all they need to do is have a scene involving Thor, Captain America etc set at Christmas and they are off the hook. Well played, Marvel/Disney.

And then I thought some more about it – isn’t it amazing what you think about at 2am? – and I realised that the Thor: The Dark World trailer (watch it here) is pretty obviously set at winter time given the look, weather and clothes worn, heck that even looks like snow on the poster.

Then I thought about what the Captain America sequel is called… The Winter Soldier (I know, it’s not directly a weather thing, I’ve read the comic) and I reckon that’s the significance of the time setting of Iron Man 3.

(Large-ish spoiler) And we already know that Banner/Hulk wasn’t aware of the events, which can be explained easily too, as Ronald pointed out, since he likes to live in remote South American villages, away from the world’s gaze he simply may not have heard.

So I felt quite smug… except I can’t explain SHIELD’s absence and then I thought to myself, who wants to bet that the SHIELD series kicks off at Christmas time?

I could be wrong. On all fronts, but damn it’s fun to speculate.

Excelsior!