With Avengers: Infinity War now just a week away, we’ve all got our theories about who will be permanently sidelined after the upcoming clash with the Mad Titan. Will Captain America (Chris Evans) live to admonish his allies’ bad language another day? Or is Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr.) vision (no, not that one) going to come true?
You can understand why we’d be so concerned after seeing both trailers, in which Josh Brolin as Thanos tosses around Iron Man with the same ease as his threat to destroy half of the universe. And the Mad Titan isn’t going into battle with just the Infinity Stones, though the ones he currently possesses make him quite formidable indeed. No, Thanos has his own squad known as the Black Order, whom we’ve glimpsed in the trailers standing above Vision (Paul Bettany), as well as next to Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Directors Anthony and Joe Russo have kept a tight lid on casting ahead of the film’s release, but now they’ve revealed who’s part of Team Thanos.
In an interview with Radio Times, the Russo brothers said Carrie Coon, whom we last saw in the devastating finale of The Leftovers, has taken on the role of supervillain Proxima Midnight, one of the Children Of Thanos to appear in the upcoming film. She has super strength and speed—and, having held her own in (separate) fights with Luke Cage and the New Avengers, is obviously great at hand-to-hand combat. Proxima Midnight’s also somewhat invulnerable. Most important, her comics’ backstory has her making her way to Wakanda for one of the Infinity Stones, which lines up with what we know about Infinity War’s plot. And since you (hopefully) don’t cast Carrie Coon just to look cool wielding a staff that may or may not be powered by a star (depends on what the Russos chose to include), Proxima Midnight is almost certainly going to give the Avengers a run for their money. Then again, Coon, who gave another superb dramatic performance in Fargo season three last year, could just sit there pondering the futility of existence and we’d still want to shed a tear watching her expressive face.
Tom Vaughan-Lawlor co-stars as Ebony Maw, another one of the Children Of Thanos, while go-to motion-capture actor (who isn’t Andy Serkis) Terry Notary is playing as Cull Obsidian, the latter of whom is known as Black Dwarf in the original comics. We don’t yet know who’s playing Corvus Glaive, but according to ScreenRant, Peter Dinklage was rumored to be stepping into the role.
Thanos and the Avengers will wage Infinity War on April 27.