*Warning: Heavy spoilers for Avengers: Endgame follows. If you haven’t seen the film, do NOT continue to read.
For over a decade, Marvel Studios has constructed a compelling and wildly ambitious story. Over that time, we’ve had the pleasure to meet and fall in love with so many characters. There has been countless moments throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe that’s made you gasp in shock, squeal in excitement, and hold back tears of sorrow or happiness. It’s been an amazing ride, that unfortunately, must come to an end. Like Tony Stark said, “part of the journey is the end”. Trying to end anything is already tough to begin with, but making sure that this 22-film Infinity Saga has a satisfying ending seemed like a daunting task. How do you properly say good-bye to over ten years of characters and stories? From both a director’s standpoint and a fan’s? Well, we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief. Avengers: Endgame is the perfect culmination of all these films with a well-deserving end that truly honors the journey we’ve taken to get here.
Endgame begins with a harsh reminder of the cataclysmic ending of Infinity War. Earth’s Mightiest Heroes failed in stopping Thanos and they don’t want you to forget it. After a final attempt to revive their loved ones and the rest of the universe fails, the Avengers are forced to accept that they’ve lost and no one was coming back. With most comic book films, we always expect someone to come at the *very* last second with the “it’s so crazy, it’ll work” plans that saves the day. But not this time. As the magnitude of the situation begins to sink in, three words appear on the screen that further cements how far the Avengers have fallen.
Most movies and plays have three distinct acts: beginning, middle, and an end. Even Marvel has gone through the entirety of the MCU to categorize their movies into different phases, similarly to acts in individual movies, except on a more larger scale. Endgame is no different. The tone of the film early on is extreme depression and self-loathing. Few heroes have tried to move on by helping the survivors of the Snap, both local and extraterrestrial. Others have tried to start families, while some have lost the only families they’ve ever known. The feeling of hopelessness continues to sink in and you being to realize it’s going to take something unimaginable to rectify the Snap. And that’s where Endgame takes the MCU to the next level.
Time travel is a tricky, tricky business. Many films have attempted their own version of time travel, as comically explained in the movie: Back to the Future, The Terminator, even Hot Tub Time Machine. Each of them possessed their own set rules for altering timelines, and so does Endgame. It’s explained that you can’t alter the past to change your future, because the future is already your past. If you did change something, that change wouldn’t affect the “future” or present timeline of where you came from initially. Instead, it would create a parallel or alternate timeline, thus, expanding on the idea of a multiverse in the MCU. With the help of Scott Lang, Tony is able to solve the concept of time travel by using the Quantum Realm, setting up one final time heist to retrieve the Infinity Stones from the past to reverse the Snap in the present.
The use of time travel allowed directors Joe and Anthony Russo to take us down memory lane. Seeing moments like the Avengers fight Loki in the Battle of New York or Star-Lord dancing and singing before stealing the Power Stone brought a wave of emotion over me, like a parent paging through a photo album of their children. You sit back and think, “Wow. We’ve really come a long way, huh?” That’s the general feeling I had throughout the entire film. A sense of amazement at both what I was seeing on screen, but also of how incredibly far this franchise has come. Now, as I said before, time travel is a tricky business. During his plea to the Ancient One for the Time Stone, she tells Bruce Banner that if the Infinity Stones are taken from their places in the past, unknown evils will befall on the timeline, while also branching out alternate timelines. Over in Stark Tower, 2019 Tony gets knocked down by 2012 Hulk and drops the Space Stone (Cosmic Cube, Tesseract). During the chaos, Loki picks up the cube and vanishes. But wait…Thor took Loki back to Asgard for sentencing in Avengers? Guess not anymore, or at least, not in *this* timeline. Everything we’ve seen up to this point is still canon and nothing has been erased, but the results of Endgame have caused splintered timelines from the main one. Naturally, no one seems to care about that and decides to venture off to another moment in time to retrieve the missing stone. I expect Disney to address these splintered timelines in some capacity in their upcoming Disney+ Marvel shows, especially the one starring Loki.
The last hour or so of Endgame shows some of the most intense, rewarding, flat out amazing scenes of the entire MCU; it’s honestly one giant sequence of fan fiction come true. From watching Cap wield Mjolnir to him finally exclaiming “Avengers Assemble”, it felt as if all of our desires throughout this 22-film experience were finally being realized. One particular scene was very powerful, and that was when all the women of the MCU came together to protect Peter Parker. This scene is a call to the A-Force, a team comprised of Marvel’s female superheroes, and maybe a hint at a possible future Marvel team-up. Unsurprisingly, this scene has received some criticism as possibly “forcing” the idea of female empowerment onto the audience. First of all, there’s no problem with displaying female empowerment, so we need to stop with those awful takes. Additionally, to the people who think this message is being “forced”, the belief that something is being forced indicates that there isn’t enough of it being presented naturally. These women continue to be pushed to the background and misrepresented, when in reality, a good number of them are actually some of the strongest characters in the MCU. I only wished that Black Widow would’ve been at the forefront of the charge against Thanos’ army.
Going into Endgame, I think many people understood and accepted the idea that not all of our heroes will make it to the end. It was different in Infinity War, because all of the people who were snapped away *had* to return, so those “deaths” didn’t have much weight to them. Luckily, there aren’t too many deaths, but do they pack a punch. Arguably the biggest sacrifice in the entire MCU, Black Widow exchanges her life so Hawkeye can obtain the Soul Stone. Once the two leave for Vormir, it’s known only one could return to the present with the stone. A once-feared Russian spy, the now-S.H.I.E.L.D. assassin found a family with the Avengers, ever since becoming Tony Stark’s assistant in Iron Man 2. People have wrongly thrown shade at Black Widow over the years, but as one of the founding members of the Avengers and as the shining light for female heroes, her sacrifice will go down as one of the greatest moments in the MCU. The mantra for the team has been “whatever it takes” in trying to bring back their friends, and Black Widow did exactly that. Unfortunately, I think her death takes a bit of a backseat toward the end of the film following another fallen Avenger and I wish she would’ve gotten the same level of respect at the end.
The other Avenger to meet their end is none other than Tony Stark. Essentially the father of the MCU, Iron Man has remained a beacon of redemption and determination for 11 years. To see Tony fall the way he did is proof that Iron Man was the heart of the MCU. He’s been plagued by visions of the him and the Avengers failing to protect the universe since his encounter with Loki. Before that first fight against the God of Mischief, Steve Rogers told Tony, “You’re not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you.” In the end, Tony showed that he *is* that guy, and he is willing to do whatever it takes to rid the universe of Thanos. It’s amazing to see how Robert Downey Jr.’s character development has been so eloquently constructed since the first Iron Man film. Seeing how his story comes to an end is a beautiful moment that left me in tears of joy that Tony finally found the peace he’s desperately searched for all these years.
Steve Rogers is a broken man in Endgame, trying to move on, but also holding onto the past as much as possible. For a man out of time, it’s only fitting that Cap’s final fight deals with jumping through it. During their trip to 1970 for the Space Stone, Captain America sees his old sweetheart, Peggy Carter. Instead of trying to get her attention, he sticks with the mission and returns to the present with the Infinity Stone and Tony. However, after the final fight is over, Cap is in charge of returning all the stones to their respective moments in time. Instead of coming back when he’s done, Steve decides to stay this time with Peggy. Wrapping up Captain America’s story this way is well-deserving for a man who’s sacrificed everything his entire life. Finally being able to settle down with the love of his life is something Cap seems to have always wanted, but could never turn his back on “the greater good”. As it was with Tony, seeing another pillar of the MCU fall is bittersweet. We’ve seen Steve Rogers change in more ways than one, watched as he learned the harsh realities of the world and how to deal with them. It’s going to be heartbreaking without these icons moving forward, but we should celebrate the wonderful, amazing ride they took us on these years.
When I left the theater, I tried thinking of other ways that this story could’ve ended, but it was impossible. Endgame was perfect in every way imaginable and concludes the Infinity Saga in a glorious fashion. Having one of the darkest tones of any Marvel movie, Endgame still contained plenty of the witty-Marvel humor we’ve come to enjoy. The Russo brothers gave Tony, Cap, and Black Widow beautiful and memorable farewells, while at the same time, added new wrinkles and developments for surviving characters that I can’t wait to see what the future holds for them. We were taken back to past events that made me reminisce and think of how far this whole franchise has come. Being able to craft this immense, complex story across 22 films is an achievement in of itself, but to also perfectly conclude this story the way they did is unbelievable. Endgame crushed the astronomical expectations it was up against, will most likely end up as the highest-grossing box office movie of all-time, but more importantly, accomplished the impossible by giving us a gratifying ending for our heroes.
Final Score: 10/10
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