The Ultimate Clue Regarding the Star Trek Into Darkness Villain? Geekdom's continuing mission to unearth Benedict Cumberbatch's character, uh, continues.

At this point, talking about who Benedict Cumberbatch's villain is in Star Trek Into Darkness is just complete overkill. There's been so much speculation from fans and secrecy and (probable) misdirection on the part of director J.J. Abrams and his team that even if we did guess who the character is, there'd be no way of confirming it anyway.

But! Let's talk a bit more about it anyway, shall we? Because the new trailer that hit yesterday has given us a clue that simply cannot be ignored. Obviously, beware of potential spoilers…

There's a quick shot in the trailer where we see a group of… coffins? Well, maybe. We know that there is some kind of tragedy and/or attack that seems to hit Earth in Star Trek Into Darkness, and presumably lives are lost. But the thing about these coffins is, if you look closely, they have windows. And the windows have frost on them.

That's because they're not coffins, guys. They're freeze chambers. And you know who spent almost 300 years in cryosleep in a freeze chamber? Khan Noonien Singh, of course!

Now, just because crysosleep chambers are in the new movie, it doesn't mean that Cumberbatch is playing Khan. Hell, he could be one of Khan's disciples, working to revive his master. (Khan was frozen along with some 80 fellow genetically-engineered "supermen" back during the Eugenics Wars on Earth in the 1990s, which geekily-speaking, should still have happened in Abrams' Star Trek timeline since those events occurred before the destruction of the Kelvin in 2009's Star Trek, which is the point at which Abram's timeline splits off from the original Shatner/Nimoy series). Or maybe the chambers have nothing to do with Khan and it's just some other group of frozen people in there.

We're not going to know until Abrams decides we should know, but this image certainly adds a tantalizing piece to the puzzle, doesn't it? But that said, Abrams knows we're looking for clues like this, so… [head explodes].

Or who knows? Maybe it's Ripley and Newt in those chambers.

Listen to Senior Editor Scott Collura's Star Trek podcast, Transporter Room 3. And talk to him on Twitter at @ScottIGN, on IGN at scottcollura and on Facebook.

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