It's time for the Marvel Cinematic Universe to start killing off its heroes

There's another Avengers movie on the horizon, and you know what that means: It's time for another round of PR-friendly promises about how this will be the ultimate Avengers movie, the one that brings all the ongoing storylines to a head and leaves the MCU forever changed.

But what if this time, it actually is?

In a sprawling Vanity Fair profile, Kevin Feige dramatically declares that Avengers 4 (shooting now for release in 2019) will "bring things you’ve never seen in superhero films: a finale." According to the publication, that means at least "some" of the original Avengers will be phased out after Avengers 4.

"There will be two distinct periods. Everything before Avengers 4 and everything after," teased Feige. "I know it will not be in ways people are expecting."

It's all very vague and might amount to not much more than hot air. However, there is a growing sense that something has to change with this franchise, and soon – if only because the contracts for the original Avengers are about to run out.

Comments from the actors add to the growing sense that we're nearing the end of an era. Chris Hemsworth described the Avengers 4 set as "the last time we get to hang out like this," while Johansson said she felt "bittersweet" about the next generation of Marvel stars.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

In other words, all signs point to a whole bunch of characters dying in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers 4 ... well, except for the fact that Marvel doesn't really do character deaths.

While villains die all the time in the MCU, it's exceedingly rare for a good guy to get killed off. Bucky, Coulson, Nick Fury, Groot, and Loki all went dramatically, only to come back once our tears had dried; Quicksilver and Yondu are among the very few heroes who've actually died and stayed dead.

Even with the expiring contracts staring them square in the face, it's hard to imagine Marvel slaughtering a bunch of beloved heroes over the next few years. It's just not their style. Besides, there are other ways to write characters out of long-running stories, including ones that offer easy excuses to bring them back when the time comes.

But if Marvel is so determined to separate the pre-Avengers 4 MCU from the post-Avengers 4 MCU, maybe it's time for them to get used to the idea of death.

The films' tendency to bring almost everyone back, no matter how improbably, have tended to rob them of stakes. One of the reasons Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 worked so well was because it didn't pull that move with Yondu. Real death would add a dangerous edge to our heroes' adventures in Avengers 4.

Moreover, leaving certain characters offscreen but technically alive would encourage fans to stay fixated on them – which in turn would undermine the effort to re-center the franchise around new flagship heroes like Spider-Man and Black Panther. Who needs Doctor Strange's Tony Stark Lite act when we know the original Tony Stark is hanging out there somewhere?

Whatever happens to the six original Avengers in Infinity War and its sequel, though, you can rest assured that this "finale" is only the end of the chapter, not the whole story.

Feige teased that the MCU currently has "22 movies in, and we’ve got another 20 movies on the docket that are completely different from anything that’s come before," including a potential Guardians of the Galaxy spinoff (or several).

In short, the characters might die, or they might not. But this franchise is gonna live forever.