Joss Whedon’s The Avengers capped off a great run for Phase One of Marvel Studios’ film slate, and now Phase Two of the studio’s comic book film line-up is taking shape.  Filming on Iron Man 3 is winding down, production on Thor: The Dark World has commenced, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier is set to get underway next March.  That leaves Guardians of the Galaxy and The Avengers 2 as the final two films of the Phase Two lineup, with Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man a slight possibility should he be able to get production started next year.

Ever since audiences were caught a glimpse of that big purple alien guy in the tag for The Avengers, fans have been pondering a major arc for the villain Thanos in further films.  As with everything Marvel we have no firm confirmation of how the character wlll come into play in Phase Two, but it’s been assumed that he’ll make his appearance in one of the later films of the slate.  Now solid confirmation is being claimed that the baddie will pop up in Guardians of the Galaxy and The Avengers 2.  Hit the jump for more.

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Image via Marvel Comics

For those that are a little confused, let me back up a bit.  Thanos was the big guy seen at the very end of The Avengers smirking at the Chitauri leader’s warning that to face off against the humans would be “to court Death itself.”  In the comics, Thanos is a massive threat to The Avengers and pretty much any and all superheroes.  He’s also obsessed with Death, a literal being, and seeks out the powerful Cosmic Cube (called the “Tesseract” in the films) and wields the Infinity Gauntlet, which basically grants Thanos an insane amount of power.

Marvel is venturing into space opera territory with Guardians of the Galaxy, and James Gunn recently confirmed that he’ll be writing and directing the ambitious feature.  Many assumed that Thanos would have some presence in Guardians to set him up as the main villain in The Avengers 2; we’ll see the superheroes face off against a number of antagonists in their own separate films, so something really, really bad needs to appear in order to necessitate the reassembling of The Avengers.

The folks over at Cosmic Book News have a source that claims to have confirmed with Thanos creator Jim Starlin at the Montreal Comic-Con that the character will indeed appear in both Guardians of the Galaxy and The Avengers 2.  As a number of rumors have come and gone over the years, Marvel has taken a firm “no comment” stance on all such rumblings until they announce things formally, so this isn’t an official confirmation.  That said, it’s not exactly a stretch to imagine the character popping up in both films.

We likely won’t hear solid confirmation regarding the villain/plot of Guardians or The Avengers 2 for some time, but Thanos didn’t appear at the end of The Avengers for nothing.  Whedon’s tease will pay off in one way or another sometime down the road, and the final two films in Marvel’s Phase Two would be a solid arc for the character.

James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy will hit theaters on August 1st, 2014, while Joss Whedon’s The Avengers 2 will open on May 1st, 2015.

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Image via Marvel Studios