- Nick Fury rallies the demoralized heroes—well, Cap and Iron Man—by reminding them that Agent Coulson thought they could be so much more.
- Banner—having come to in a warehouse with a Hulk-sized hole in the roof—gets a pep talk from a friendly security guard and heads off to Manhattan to see if he can help stop Loki's scheme.
- Thor dusts himself off, Black Widow and Hawkeye reconcile, and the team in the Helicarrier gets ready to go get Loki.
- Iron Man arrives first, trying unsuccessfully to blow up the invasion-starting doohickey being powered by the Tesseract on the roof.
- When that doesn't work, he adopts Plan B: casually threatening Loki in order to buy the rest of the team time to get there.
- He's interrupted by the Tesseract opening up the gate.
- And…here come the aliens.