The first full trailer for Avengers: Infinity War focuses heavily on its heroes — and no wonder, there are approximately one million of them. Thanos, the ultimate villain of the blockbuster franchise’s overarching plot, also features prominently.
What’s a little more subtle is the appearance of a couple of Thanos-adjacent villains and villainous races who you might be curious about. One, the lady who throws that big spear at Captain America:
And the other, an army of four-armed snarling baddies.
Both appear to be references to elements introduced in Marvel’s 2014 Infinity crossover event, written by Jonathan Hickman.
The Outriders
The alien army seems likely based on the Outriders, a race of four-armed alien assassins with some seriously creepy powers: Invisibility, intangibility and, finally, the ability to read minds by phasing their fingers inside a person’s head, usually while they’re asleep.
At the moment all that we know is that the design is similar: In Infinity, Outriders are lone assassins, messengers and scouts — not exactly shock troops and foot soldiers. Given that, they may well have a less creepy set of powers in Avengers: Infinity War.
The Children of Thanos
That blue-faced lady who throws a fancy spear at Captain America is Proxima Midnight (I know, right?), one of the Children of Thanos, and we’ve actually seen her before. Her design was revealed this summer at D23, along with the rest of her squad of heavy-hitting servants of Thanos.
D23. Thanos & the Black Order. #Nikon #PhotoOfTheDay pic.twitter.com/cKL9MWSGWe
— Photo Blog USA (@photoblog_usa) September 18, 2017
At D23, Proxima was depicted with a black and metallic costume, a horned headdress, pale skin, blue hair and a mighty spear. In comics, she looks not dissimilar:
The Children of Thanos consist of Proxima and three other alien warriors, Corvus Glaive, Ebony Maw and Cull Obsidian. (And, given their name, we might reasonably assume that Gamora and Nebula, of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, were also once on the roster or in the running to be.) They were all introduced as members of the Black Order in Infinity.
We don’t get a good look at Corvus, Ebony or Cull in the trailer — though we do see a couple of unknown bad guys pinning the Vision down and attempting to pry the Mind Stone out of his forehead — but we’ll likely see a lot more before Infinity War hits theaters in May 2018.