Avengers: Endgame SPOILER thread

As mentioned earlier in the thread, my theory is that he returned to Peggy Carter and told her basically anything. This launched them into an alternate universe where Shield snuffs Hydra out before the events of Winter Soldier, Bucky is recovered long before he becomes a Hydra assassin and kills Tony's parents among others, and Cap finally loses his virginity. Along the way he commissions a new shield from Wakanda or Howard Stark, and explains everything he learned about quantum time travel to Hank Pym so he can figure it out and send Captain America back to his own reality for an emotional sendoff.

Or, as Rumak said, he was tired of fighting and lived a quiet life as Peggy's retired boytoy. And the branching reality was so unaltered that it just folded into the one reality.

Or they just didn't care and the emotional beat was more important than nailing down the rules of time travel. "Leave it to the fanboys, if we keep it vague enough they'll figure something out."

In The First Avenger, he mentions that he hasn't done much 'dancing'. In Winter Soldier, he tells Black Widow that he hasn't been on dates because he's too busy. In Civil War, he's just starting the bare beginnings of a relationship with Sharon Carter (which, still ew). Then he's on the run with the fugitive Avengers until Infinity War, and then Sharon Carter gets dusted and he doesn't seem to be in the mood to get some. There is at least a possibility that he is still a virgin when he goes back in time. Captain America seems like a boy who is saving himself for the right girl.

I mean he probably isn't an 'incel' incel either way. He's just really busy with work and doesn't have time for dating.

It all started with four words. "I am Iron Man."

Well, before that, it started with a dream... to make a lot of money. Marvel wasn't getting paid from the superhero movies using their characters because they sold the film rights to their biggest stars in the 90s. They wanted to change this. So with the B-listers still left in their toybox and a financing deal with Merrill Lynch they set out to create their own film universe. This was audacious for a number of reasons, not least because if their first one or two films flopped then they would lose basically all the film rights they had left. They needed to open with a home run. They went with Iron Man, a certified B-List superhero fresh off an unpopular and divisive comic book storyline. To match, they cast Robert Downey Jr, a certified B-list actor who had never been in a blockbuster movie and had a history of substance abuse, arrests, rehab, and relapse.

There were some concerns.

Hindsight, 20/20, etc. He knocked the role out of the park and launched the defining cultural touchstone of the last eleven years (come at me Game of Thrones). In-universe and out of it he is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. If the MCU didn't have their Iron Man it may have died in its infancy and if Downey didn't have the MCU he wouldn't have his own private island.

It all started with "I am Iron Man." And, fittingly, it damn near ended with that as well. Then Tony is lying there and Pepper Potts tells him to rest, that they will get by without him, that he can lay down his burden... well, it works on a number of levels.

Other things that made me cry at the end of the movie: Proof that Tony still has a heart, Happy Hogan promising to buy Tony's daughter cheeseburgers, I love you 3000, Tom Holland's face. And Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch thinking about Black Widow. 

Towards the end of the movie, Hawkeye runs on the battlefield and asks what the hell is he supposed to do with the magic gauntlet that he is holding and that is causing all the bad guys to try to murder him. Ant-Man and the Wasp formulate a plan on the fly to get the gauntlet to the hilariously recurring dumb van that everyone hates and nobody is able to get rid of. But this still involves someone running through the teeth of the army, and Hawkeye with a dumb haircut and arm sleeve and a cool sword is still Hawkeye.

Sorry Hawkeye.

So there is... wait for it... a gauntlet. A gauntlet of superheroes to transport the gauntlet to where the gauntlet needs to go. Hawkeye passes the gauntlet on to Black Panther (and Panther calls him his name! Friendship upgrade since Civil War). Black Panther does his cool Black Panther stuff but is intercepted by Thanos and damn near dies before passing the gauntlet on to Spider-Man. Spidey makes it a fair distance with instant-kill mode and a little help from his friends, but is blasted out of the air by Thanos's spaceship. The shell-shocked panicking teenager lies on the ground clutching the gauntlet to his chest before Captain Marvel offers to carry it the rest of the way.

(side note: I love how reassuring Brie Larson's Captain Marvel is to Spidey in that moment. Playful, friendly, and radiating 'don't worry, I've got this'. She is definitely great with kids.)

This doesn't work, of course. But it was an awesome moment to see Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor backing up what seems like the new 'trinity' - Black Panther, Spider-Man, and Captain Marvel. Taking suggestions on what the new team up movie (what, you think Disney doesn't want to make two billion dollars again?) will be called. The New Avengers? The Revengers? Captain Marvel and the Marvels?

I don't have any additional content for this. It just happens. And it's awesome.

That was more from GOTG2, where Drax calls Mantis ugly for no apparent reason. I agree that she is adorable.

The Smurfette of the Avengers who fights world-ending bad guys with moxie and wrist zappy things has always been motivated by the idea that she's a bad person and she needs to redeem herself. Joss Whedon made some... interesting choices with her character, but he at least established that. Her 'move', so to speak, was to let bad guys rhetorically and sometimes violently abuse her to make them feel all big and then they maybe reveal something about their strategy. It's effective but it's also real dark. She's scared shitless of the Hulk but Clint needs help so off she goes. Then she puts herself and the mission at risk to save Clint because he's the one who saved her before. She has red in her ledger. She needs to wipe it out.

She loses her major source of stability in Winter Soldier, when she learns the good guy organisation she had dedicated herself to doing not-so-good things for had in fact been commandeered by Hydra. Adrift, she commits fully to the Avengers and her weird new family of time-travellers and witches. And this goes well enough for a while until the universe runs afoul of a mad Titan. Naturally she blames herself. We see in the opening of Endgame that of everyone she's struggling to hang on to everything she had and is not able to let go. She holds herself together for 'the work' and cries alone while eating peanut butter sandwiches when she thinks nobody else is watching. Her family made her a better person. It made the red in her ledger less onerous. What does she have now?

Then, a one-in-a-million chance that could result in all of their deaths presents itself. She throws herself in without a second thought. Fast forward, she ends up Vormir with Clint and she again has to save him. During a giant happy ending where literally everyone looks awesome and does awesome things, she lies dead at the bottom of an abyss in a desolate alien planet in an alternate reality. Her body will never be recovered by her family and she will never know that without her sacrifice it all would have been for nothing. That she saved everyone.

Because she thought she had red in her ledger. She needed to wipe it out.

*wipes away tears* So, uh, let's hope her solo movie somehow involves her achieving true closure and happiness and eating grapes on the beach or some shit. Because damn.