With the first teaser for 'Avengers: Endgame' racking up well over 40 million views from YouTube alone in the space of less than 24 hours, you can imagine that there's a huge amount of excitement surrounding the movie.

Plot details have been kept tightly under wraps as you'd expect, although we do know that certain characters are certain to survive - all thanks to movie announcements from the likes of 'Spider-Man: Far From Home' and 'Black Panther 2'.

But what can we infer and shamelessly read into from the teaser? It's barely two and a half minutes long, right?

For starters...

 

"Is this thing on?" So, when we last left Tony Stark, he was alone on Titan with the Guardians of the Galaxy - most of them, anyway - disintegrating before his very eyes, along with Spider-Man. Thanos had escaped to Earth and carried out his plan of wiping out half of all life in the galaxy. Basically, everything he said he'd do, he did.

That's a lovely shot of the Guardians' ship, the Benatar. Named after Pat Benatar, singer of 'Love Is A Battlefield' and 'We Belong'. Yes, Peter Quill named his ship after '80s singer-songwriter Pat Benatar. Anyway, Tony Stark is left on the ship with Nebula - who we'll see later - and is basically floating through space, unsure of his fate and awaiting death.

Cut to the Marvel logo and then...

"Thanos did exactly what he said he was gonna do." That first shot is lifted straight from 'Infinity Gauntlet', the comic on which most of 'Infinity War' and likely 'Endgame' was based. Basically, Thanos said that once he had balanced the universe, he would return to his planet and "watch the sun rise on a grateful universe." So, yeah, basically Thanos has no evil plan anymore - because he won.

What'll be interesting to see is how each of the characters, and the world itself, deals with the idea of 50% of all people simply vanishing. The world didn't explode, people just simply disappeared in an instant and those left behind are, well, just that - left behind.

There's Dr. Bruce Banner, looking over the details of who of the Avengers has gone missing since the Snap, which actually has an official in-universe name - the Decimation. Anyway, Scott Lang / Ant-Man is gone and so is Shuri, Black Panther's sister. Interesting tidbit - that image is the second result that pops up when you Google search for 'Paul Rudd'.

That's Nebula. She and Tony Stark were the only two survivors on Titan, as everyone else vanished in the Snap. Nebula is likely to play a major role in 'Endgame', as the character was a major one in the comics. For a time, Nebula controlled the Infinity Gauntlet and went mad with power. Will that happen here? Unlikely, but who knows.

If you were wondering where Hawkeye was when all of this went down and where he is afterwards, this tells you everything you need to know. In the comics, Hawkeye assumes an new identity - Ronin - and the leading theory is that Hawkeye's family vanished in the Snap, and that he assumed the new identity so he could try and figure out what happened to them.

There's a lot of talk about this particular shot, and that it mirrors a scene from 'Captain America: The First Avenger'. The inference is that he looked at his compass and the image of Agent Carter when he sacrificed himself, and the same thing's going to happen here.

Most people are assuming that Chris Evans is done with the character after this, and certainly that was what most people took from the tweet he sent out after he'd finished filming. After that, Anthony Russo gave an interview to AP where he claimed that Evans wasn't actually done with the role after all, but stopped short of explaining how.

Now, here's the thing - Anthony Russo's lied before about 'Avengers: Endgame'. Previously, he said that the title of the movie hadn't been mentioned in 'Infinity War', when in fact it had. This means he's basically an unreliable source because, well, he's f*cking with people about this movie.

Anyway, whether Cap survives or not remains to be seen. Our guess? He's a goner, and so's Tony Stark. Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans both have loads of stuff lined up after 'Avengers: Endgame', so it looks like they're done with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. At least, until the Fox / Marvel characters come into play.

The fact that the broken pieces are reassembling basically means they're trying to piece back together what was broken by 'Infinity War'. Metaphors! Symbolism! Subtext!

So, Scott Lang / Ant-Man was supposed to have been lost in the Quantum Realm at the end of 'Ant-Man & The Wasp', as Hank Pym, Janet Pym and Hope Van Dyne all vanished in the Snap. Somehow, he managed to get himself out of the Quantum Realm and drove the Quantum Realm van thingy straight to the Avengers' base.

The Quantum Realm is going to play a major role, and to be honest, making Ant-Man the underdog who saves everyone is just perfect for 'Avengers: Endgame'.

So, that's about everything we can find in the two and a half minutes of the teaser. No doubt there'll be another full trailer to come in the months ahead that we'll be pouring over then.

'Avengers: Endgame' hits Irish cinemas on April 26th.