It's Possible Kevin Feige is Hinting at The Defenders Showing Up in THE AVENGERS Sequels

Since Marvel's Netflix shows were announced, fans have had one huge question: will The Defenders appear on the big screen alongside The Avengers to battle Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War or its sequel? We still don't have a definitive answer for that (and I suspect we may not until Infinity War actually comes out), but there's a chance Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige could be, possibly, vaguely, maybe hinting at their inclusion.

In a new interview promoting the upcoming release of Doctor Strange, Feige told IGN:

"There's a reason we have publicly called the first one 'Infinity War' and the second one 'Untitled,' because the movies we were developing were not -- certainly there's a connection, there are with all our movies -- but it's not a first part and a second part. It's a whole movie and a whole story, and then a whole movie and a whole story. That's about all I can say...

"We will be intercutting a lot of stories in that movie in a lot of different locales, as it sort of is in the Avengers movies as well; who is facing off against who. In this movie, it's going to be fun to mix that up. One of the things that's great about the Infinity Gauntlet is everybody tried to go up against Thanos whether they were god-like powers or not, because that's what Avengers do. The fun about those two movies that we're doing essentially at the same time is everybody's there."

When specifically asked whether The Defenders would be included, he simply said, "Spoilers!"

If you actually read the text of his answer, it seems fairly clear to me that Feige is specifically talking about the members of the Avengers who don't have god-like powers, like Black Widow and Hawkeye, as the ones going up against Thanos. But his "Spoilers!" response seems to technically leave the door open as a non-denial, so fans can still have a little bit of hope that this could come to pass.

The question, of course, is whether fans actually want this to happen, or whether they just think they want it. A movie is a lot different than the pages of a comic book, and as we've seen in Age of Ultron and to a lesser degree in Civil War, things can get a little bogged down in a film with so many characters to juggle. The cast list for these Avengers movies would be daunting enough without the inclusion of The Defenders, so adding them into the mix could very well be the difference between having a movie that feels too overstuffed and disjointed and one that barely holds together.

What do you think?