On Friday, Avengers Campus opened to the general public at the Disneyland Resort. As one might expect, the land is full of easter eggs and references to Marvel Comics, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and every other corner of Marvel's superhero brand. However, as it turns out, one element of Avengers Campus was actually already seen in the MCU. In this case an easter egg reference went in the other direction. It turns out that the Quinjet seen in Avengers: Endgame was actually designed by Walt Disney Imagineering for Avengers Campus.
I attended a special media preview for Avengers Campus prior to it opening, and during a Q&A session with several key personnel with Walt Disney Imagineering at Disneyland Resort, they were asked what their favorite easter egg in the new land was. Scot Drake, Creative Executive at WDI for the Marvel Global Portfolio, revealed that his favorite easter egg in Avengers Campus wasn't a reference to a comic or film in the land, but an easter egg in an MCU movie that was actually a reference to the land. Drake explained...
My favorite easter egg is actually in a film, Avengers: Endgame. There is a tease towards the Quinjet that we designed specifically for Avengers Campus, That's how close we've been working with our studios partners, that not only are we providing easter eggs that link back to the films, but we're starting to see this kind of connected growth of the universe where now they're teasing things from the park. That was definitely my highlight.
The Quinjet in question must be the one seen at the end of Avengers: Endgame when Hawkeye uses it to go home to his family. It seems this particular Quinjet was not designed by people at Marvel Studios, but rather Walt Disney Imagineering, as it is the same design as the Quinjet that now sits atop the Avengers HQ building inside Avengers Campus.
It's not the first time that we've seen Disney's films reference their theme parks, even before the theme park was a real thing. There's a reference to the Black Spires in Solo: A Star Wars Story, which are only found inside Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge. The movie came out a year before the first theme park land opened.
The purpose of a theme park is to make you feel like when you're inside a land or on a ride that you're really inside the world that space creates. This often means feeling like you're in your favorite movie. Seeing that Quinjet on the roof of the building in Avengers Campus is part of what does that, but knowing that the design was literally in the movie makes it all feel that much more real.
It will be interesting to see how Avengers Campus and the MCU continue to build each other moving forward. It's already been teased that as new characters are introduced in the MCU, many of them will likely appear in Avengers Campus in short order. And now we may need to keep our eyes open in future films for references to the theme park as well.
