Thanos died in Avengers: Endgame, after serving as the antagonist through the Infinity Saga, but the MCU might not just be done with him yet and he still has an important role to play in Phase 5!
Thanos and his armies were defeated in Avengers: Endgame after the surviving heroes went back in the time to get the Infinity Stones before he did and even undid Thanos’ snap and Iron Man had to sacrifice himself with a final snap and destroy the Mad Titan. But the MCU is still dealing with all the consequences of his acts and now even though Thanos is dead, he will be impacting phases especially Phase 5 as a Nova movie is in the works… reportedly.
And in order to tell his sorry, the MCU would have to revisit Infinity War and the destruction of the Nova Corps of which Thanos was responsible.
According to Marvel Comics, Nova’s real name is Richard Rider and he is a high school student selected by the dying Rohmann Dey as his replacement at the Nova Corps as he is the only surviving member.
Rider was then given the uniform and powers of a Nova Centurion and despite the fact that he got very little instruction on how to truly use them, he went on to become a superhero. If you remember clearly, Rhomann Dey has already been introduced in the MCU in Guardians of the Galaxy where he was played by John C. Rielly, and Nova was planned at some point to appear in Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame.
In order to tell the origin of Nova, the movie will have to go back to Infinity War, where Thanos, when looking to acquire the Power Stone, which was under the protection of the Nova Corps, killed every member as well half the population of Xandar. That means that Nova’s story will be inevitably connected to Thanos and Phase 5 can’t get rid of Thanos just yet.
Thanos certainly played an important part in the history of the MCU but now that the universe is dealing with other concepts and introducing new characters, it’s a bit tiring to go back to Thanos in the future.
