I’m going to start this with a warning. This is all speculation based on knowledge of the comic book series, the MCU’s history, and the released trailers. THERE MAY BE SOME SPOILERS! If you do not wish to go into this movie with any information about it please click the back arrow at the top left of your screen.

Those of you who have stuck around are in for a bit of a lengthy piece of literature. That is due to the fact of seven minutes and three seconds in trailers, hours upon hours of YouTube breakdowns (which have the ability to slow the trailer down so we can get a better look at the footage), numerous comics, tons of raving reviews on the internet, and what marvel has put out on their website. I am trying to condense all of that information into one concise explanation of what you could see on the big screen next week.

The first thing I’m going to touch on is cameos. Come on people, this is a marvel movie. It must have cameos. As always we’ll get to see Stan Lee and his wit show up somewhere in the movie. There are a few other people I think we could see show up. With the confirmation of Martin Freeman in the movie, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see Benedict Cumberbatch following behind him. Oh yeah, that’s right, Cumberbatch is part of Marvel now. The third phrase of The MCU includes several characters that I think we could definitely catch a glimpse of (because that’s how marvel rolls). My favorite of these has got to be a Guardian of the Galaxy. They’ve got their second volume coming out next year. Another character that marvel could sneak in there somewhere is The Wasp. Revealed in the end of Ant-Man we now know she is officially a real contender to show up more, especially with her own movie in 2018. 2019 comes with the release of Captain Marvel, another person I could see getting her movie day debut somewhere in there. One that could show up, though I’m less confident on this one, is an inhuman. The Inhumans do have a movie coming out at some point in the foreseeable future so maybe?

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about who we know (or at least think we know) is in the movie. As shown already we’ll be getting Cap, Iron Man, Black widow, The Winter Soldier, The Falcon, War Machine, Hawkeye, The Vision, The Scarlet Witch, Ant-Man, Black Panther, and Spider-Man. Black Panther and Spider-Man both have movies coming out in the MCU as well as the others previously mentioned. If they’re done justice here in the civil war, their own movies will do exponentially better in the box office. Black Panther (as far as I could find) has never had his own movie. Spider-Man however has quite the track record for awful, or slightly bearable movies, let’s hope that this newer, younger Spider-Man can pull that franchise back around. Other characters we see showing up are Crossbones (Previously seen in the last Captain America Movie), Zemo (Another of Cap’s old enemies who has a long track record of going toe to toe with Cap in the comics), and several GSG9 members (The German counter-terrorism and special operations unit). In simplified terms, a whole bunch of Cap’s old enemies who are probably going to cause the mission that goes horribly wrong that sparks Starks drive for someone to keep the Avengers in check.

This is the section where I more or less go on a one paragraph rant about how Marvel may have screwed up. If you don’t want to read that skip to the next paragraph. I think Marvel had two aces up their sleeve, The Black Panther and Spider-Man. If they’d have kept the public in the dark about those two until the release, the resulting insanity of all the people watching would’ve been through the roof. But instead, they chose to let us see all of their tricks beforehand. Unless there’s other characters we don’t know about yet…

The trailers released for this next installment leave some questions. The most obvious of these: Is War Machine dead? I doubt it. Why would they show it? Then everyone would see it coming. Considering who has more movies coming out we can safely guess that black widow, The Winter Soldier, The Scarlet Witch, or Hawkeye could potentially die in this movie. Another question needing to be addressed is “What is Hydra/S.H.I.E.L.D’S role in this movie? In short, I don’t know, but I have a couple of guesses. The first is that they simply are gone, relics of the past. The other is that they are there, operating under the radar, and under a new set of names.

The Trailers do leave us with a few gems of knowledge. The first is that we get to see a disease center with bad guys overrunning it and Cap jumping in to kick their butts. This location suggests that Crossbones may be trying to steal an infectious disease to try to do something with that. Also we get handed the little hint of a possible Hydra logo behind the closing doors in the opening shot of one of the trailers. Ant-Man riding an arrow, landing on Iron Man, and possible incapacitating him via a small opening. Also we get to see what looks to be a new set of armor for Stark. His nice little bullet proof glove watch thingy also the retractable facemask that seems to store behind his head instead of above it. We get to see a U.N. building get blown up. We know that someone is after Bucky. We know that The Scarlet Witch is seen taking down The Vision. These trailers give away several small details. Also, we can’t forget the scene at the end where Cap and Bucky are throwing the shield back and forth across Stark’s face, over and over, and over again.

Here is where I’m going to take everything I’ve seen and try to predict what is going to happen in this next movie.

MUCH HIGHER CHANCE OF SPOILERS ACTUALLY BEING CORRECT AFTER THIS POINT!!!

Opening shot, a dramatic entrance by none other than Captain America. He and the rest of the avengers have been sent to stop Crossbones, a former S.H.I.E.L.D./Hydra member who was very badly injured and deformed in the last Captain America movie. The team (minus Stark and War Machine) storms into a medical research and infectious disease lab to stop Crossbones in his tracks. Crossbones manages to pull a fast one on them and escapes with whatever it was he was after. This humiliating defeat is only trumped by that of an attack on a U.N. council meeting. The attack was believed to have been carried out by Bucky Barnes, a.k.a The Winter Soldier. While Cap refuses to believe this the whole world begins hunting him down. Cap manages to locate Bucky and interrogate him. Upon realizing that he had broken out of his enslavement by Hydra Cap is determined to set the record straight. Then the German police show up and storm the place. Cap is forced to incapacitate them all to allow Bucky to escape. However as he escapes The Black Panther (who is conveniently a survivor of the attack on the U.N.) has also managed to track him down and wishes to bring him to justice. This leads to the epic chase scene we get a glimpse of in the trailer. After Cap and Bucky escape together they must go undercover. It is to be noted that the entire time Stark has been leading his own team to try to get Bucky before Cap gets word of it.

After all of that, we get the dramatic reveal that the real bad guy of the movie is not Crossbones, but his boss Baron Zemo. The Baron has plans to fix the world’s issues, but only by taking it over. In order to do this he needs the Avengers out of the way. In order to do that he set up Bucky as the fall man for the attack, knowing the Cap would come to his aid, and in turn start the civil war between the two teams. Seeing that his plans have succeeded he moves into the second stage that will be kept secret until the second movie (Even though he himself will be defeated in this movie).

To Prove Bucky’s Innocence Cap knows that he has to catch Crossbones and prove he did it. Thus the epic Cap holding a helicopter to the pad by muscle and sheer willpower. This plan does succeed in terms of stopping Crossbones, as he pulls the copter back onto the pad and forces it to break. Almost immediately The Black Panther shows up and tries to stop Cap from helping Bucky and take him in. Then the chopper for the German Special forces shows up and shoots at him giving time for Cap to escape. With nowhere left to run, Cap and his team of avengers are forced into hiding and surveillance. This leads to several minor confrontations between Stark, who is playing the role of the seeker, and Bucky/Cap who are currently hiding while Stark counts down. The game is on and they do meet up, though it would seem that in most cases Bucky and Cap fight as a tandem team to defeat Stark in these smaller battles. Then we get to the ultimate undoing of the team. A 15 minute montage of supers kicking each other’s butts, some added humor (“We’re still friends right?” “Depends on how hard you hit me”- Black Widow and Hawkeye) on the tarmac of a German Airport (possibly airbase) in which we see the epic Hawkeye shoots Ant-Man onto Stark’s armor shot. We see War Machine open fire on The Scarlet Witch and Hawkeye. Some sort of anti-air weapon, or a misfire from Stark shoots down War Machine who is now severely injured, but not dead. We see Hawkeye and Black Widow battling it out. Then we see the final shot of the sequence before this whole scene goes into a classic IMAX battle. Spider-Man, at the command from Stark of “Underoos” flips over Cap, steals his shield, and ties his hands together with webs. Then things start getting crazy. We see an epic fight between all the Heros. At one point the fight moves indoors where we see The Scarlet Witch turning off The Vision with her hex power. We see The Falcon and Cap running from something when Spider-Man swings through the window and kicks poor Falcon right where it counts. This sends him flying. (Pun intended) Spider-Man blocking a punch from Bucky’s mechanical arm is an impressive feat. Then we see some other random fighting and action sequences. And somehow someone is dead in this scene (Possibly more than one someone), one team is forced to retreat, then we get some inspirational words from either Cap or Iron Man to the effect of “Have I done what I should have done? Did I do what is right? Did I make the right call?” Then the end credits roll and we get one of three post credit scenes. The first is a Thanos reference. The Second is a Thor Ragnarok reference. The third is something complete out of Marvel’s hat of tricks (possibly something Inhumans related or a Captain America: Civil War part two related).

So there it is. Check back in with us after the release to see how accurate I was and what we rate the movie at.