Avengers 4 Directors Return to Social Media & Join Thanos Meme

Marvel filmmakers Joe and Anthony Russo have returned to social media, and seemingly joined a popular Thanos subreddit. Having directed four films for the MCU - including next year's Avengers 4 - the two are well aware of how invested the fan community is with the franchise, especially the Phase 3 Avengers sequels, given that they're the culmination of the overall narrative that the film series has been telling since 2008's Iron Man. The two pulled a major stunner at the end of Avengers: Infinity War by having the Mad Titan succeed in his galactic genocide plans. Since then, they've been quiet on social media, but now, they've made a surprising return.

Two months after Infinity War rolled out in theaters, the directing duo - alongside the rest of their cast and crew - are back at work for the scheduled reshoots and pick-up shots needed for Avengers 4. Scheduled to last the entire summer, the additional work for the still-untitled film is being heavily guarded to prevent any kind of leaks that may give away spoilers for the much-anticipated blockbuster. But amidst their busy schedule, it looks like the Russos still found time for some social media action.

Making their return on Instagram after wiping out their account entirely, the Russos uploaded two screenshots of the popular subreddit r/ThanosDidNothingWrong, seemingly insinuating that they've joined the forum under unidentifiable usernames. The subreddit gained traction recently when it announced plans to ban half of its users, similar to how the Mad Titan sought to bring "balance" to the universe by wiping out half of the life on it with his infamous snap.

The Russos' latest social media upload may well be purely for fun. After all, since the news broke that the subreddit is playfully recreating the events of Infinity War, membership of the forum has tripled - all wanting to get in on the fun set to take place July 9, which is probably what the Marvel directors want to do as well. The two have been known to use their platform to not only interact with their fans, but also actively join various online shenanigans related to the much-discussed Avengers sequels. Prior to the release of Infinity War, they trolled fans with a hilarious Soul Stone post at the height of everyone's clamor with regard to its location, and even joked about Hawkeye's absence in the marketing when people were most heavily speculating what his role would be in the film.

That said, with how creative Marvel Studios has been in promoting their movies (i.e. Tom Holland "accidentally" revealing Infinity War's poster and recently "leaking" Spider-Man 2's official title), this could hypothetically be part of something bigger by the company. Especially considering that the MCU is skipping its annual Hall H panel at San Diego Comic-Con later this month. If the Russos do truly plan to participate in r/ThanosDidNothingWrong's version of the snap, perhaps the reveal of which of them survived will be accompanied by a juicy tidbit about Avengers 4. While Reddit may not seem like a big enough stage to announce anything major on, its community is quite active when it comes to discussing Marvel Studios, and this Thanos snap stunt has only served to increase that.

Even if the above post turns out to be nothing more than what it appears to be at face value, the Russos strategically coming back to social media and carefully curating their posts as opposed to regularly posting scattered updates is a great way to keep the buzz going for Avengers 4. Not that the film needs any more marketing, but with no Marvel movie coming out until Captain Marvel in March, it doesn't hurt to give fans something else to speculate about.