If you haven’t yet seen Avengers: Infinity War, STOP reading this now because there are going to be a LOT of spoilers as I try to explain what the ending meant, and what we can expect in Avengers 4. Let’s get into it!
FIRST, WHO DIED?
If you take a look at my predictions about who was untouchable, you can see that I was COMPLETELY WRONG lol. Spider-Man, Black Panther, Doctor Strange and the Guardians all seemingly had bright futures with lots of money making sequels, and yet Marvel flipped everything on its head, and killed everyone we thought they couldn’t. It was really kind of genius. Let’s take a quick look at the ten people that got “dusted” after Thanos’ finger snap wiped out half of the universe:
Bucky, Falcon, Doctor Strange, Black Panther, Spider-Man, Scarlett Witch, Star Lord, Drax, Mantis and Groot all disintegrated in extremely disturbing fashion (people in my theater we’re screaming “NO!!!!” and “FUCK THIS!”…I can’t imagine being a kid and seeing that, it would probably give me nightmares for years). It was definitely shocking, mostly because of who they were. We were prepared for some heroes to die, but not this crew. Notice anything about this grouping? They are ALL the future of the MCU. If you were a character that was introduced after Phase One ended with the first Avengers movie (minus Rocket, Nebula, Okoye and Mbaku), you didn’t make it out of this one. Now, clearly we know that Marvel didn’t just kill the franchise of the number three film of all time in Black Panther, so what’s going on? Did they actually die? Yep. I think they did, which is pretty messed up. It was easy to distance yourself from the emotional ramifications of the ending because, even from just a marketing standpoint, there’s just no way it sticks. But for those characters in that moment, they did really die. Which was pretty brutal for the ten who were left alive to witness it.
Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hulk, Black Widow, War Machine, Rocket, Nebula, Okoye and Mbaku are the ten who got lucky enough to end up on the side of humanity that was spared (we don’t know what’s going on with Ant-Man and Hawkeye because they didn’t get a second of screen time, so we’ll ignore them for now). All of our heroes in the first Avengers movie survived, which felt literally impossible going into this. After ten years, they are all winding down their turns as these characters, and it certainly seemed like we were going to get big sacrificial scenes from either Captain America, Iron Man, or both. But instead, these are the only ten heroes left to try to undo what happened. And like I said, this was a genius move. Infinity War was overstuffed with characters, hardly giving any time to Captain America and several other “main characters”. This second movie will start with a character board that’s been cut in half, giving our original heroes more screen time in one last adventure to set everything right before they retire.
SO WHAT THE HECK WILL THEY DO?
Doctor Strange was perhaps the most important person in this movie, since he was the one who not only was protecting one of the six Infinity Stones, but also has the most knowledge about how this was all going to play out. Strange looked ahead into the future, and saw only ONE possible outcome where they are able to defeat Thanos. Even though he swore to Tony earlier in the film he wouldn’t give up the stone to save his life, he ends up doing exactly that. As Strange disintegrates, he tells Tony, “This was the only way.” So even though they “lost” at the end of this movie, Strange seems to think that the events to defeat Thanos are in motion, and it included letting Thanos win (although it MIGHT have helped to tell Tony what the plan was that would work, but I guess that takes away the mystery of the second movie).
So, assuming that everything we saw was real, the only real way to undo everything and save everyone who died is by doing one of my favorite movie plots: TIME TRAVEL! This is gonna be kind of tricky, though, since the only Avenger who can bend time (Dr. Strange) just died. There are really FOUR options I can think of here about what could actually enable our heroes to journey back in time and try to beat Thanos BEFORE he soundly defeated them.
The first is that Strange’s fellow sorcerer Wong is presumably still alive back at the Sanctum, and he could perhaps figure out some time spell to send everyone back. This is pretty easy and anticlimactic, which makes it seem unlikely. The second is a little more ridiculous, but they could actually have the three biggest minds in the MCU (Shuri, Stark and Bruce Banner) actually figure out a way to INVENT time travel. This seems like a stretch even by Marvel’s fantastical standards, so I don’t think it will happen (but, like I said, Strange died having faith that Tony specifically was important enough to save so he could fix everything, so who knows). The third is reading into the mysterious absence of Ant-Man from this movie, that maybe he is the key and somehow the Quantum Realm will be important. It could somehow enable everyone to travel back in time if they shrink small enough (because reasons) or perhaps everyone that got dusted didn’t actually die, and were instead transported to the microscopic world. I think this would all be a little too weird, so that leaves the fourth option, involving the post-credit scene with Nick Fury.
Right before Fury disintegrated, he was able to page someone on a ridiculous looking beeper, and luckily, the SOS message went through. We saw the logo of Captain Marvel on the screen, which is Brie Larson’s new character getting her own movie coming out next year. Captain Marvel’s movie will be set in the 90s, but then we have to assume she leaves Earth at the end of that movie, because she hasn’t been called on before. For Fury to call her, he must know she can do something to go back in time and save his ass. Captain Marvel is supposedly the most powerful Avenger, and while we don’t know much about her, there’s a good chance she will be the key to helping our original heroes go back in time.
So I think that’s what the fourth Avengers movie will be (Avengers: Back in Time?), an extremely exciting journey to try to undo everything, and recruit all of the Avengers who died before they “became” Avengers in the first place. I have a feeling that everyone who actually “died” in the dusting of this one, will ultimately be the ones who are the safest bets to emerge from Avengers 4 still alive. Everyone who ended up alive after the dusting, are the heavy hitters who will ACTUALLY be sacrificing themselves in Avengers 4 to reset the universe and destroy Thanos (and if we are actually time-traveling, I’d love to see Captain America choose to somehow stay back in the 40’s and get to live out his life with his one true love Agent Carter. Then we could get an ending scene with Tony going to visit an old Cap on his deathbed in the new present day. How perfect would that be?) Marvel was able to both kill everyone that was unkillable in this one, and then will kill the people who are actually ending their arc in part 2. Still with me?
OK, BUT WHAT ABOUT PEOPLE THAT DIED BEFORE THE SNAP?
Even though going back in time theoretically opens up saving everybody (even Coulson!), the movie treated the deaths of the four people who died earlier…Heimdall, Loki, Gamora and Vision…as if they were final. I think this will probably end up somehow being the case for Heimdall and Loki, but I find it really hard to believe we’ve seen the last of Gamora and Vision.
Gamora’s life is somehow linked to the Soul Stone, and I have a feeling if it is taken back from Thanos and returned to it’s planet, she might wake back up and have her soul come back to her body. The person’s soul who you loved and sacrificed might be actually “powering” the Soul Stone. After Thanos sacrificed her, he woke up at the base of the mountain, laying in water, and had the Soul Stone in his hand. There was definitely something different about this stone when he acquired it. And after he snapped his fingers, he appeared in a spiritual plane, and a young Gamora was there to ask if he did it. I think Gamora will stay in this place until the Soul Stone is returned.
As far as Vision, it certainly seems like Shuri was able to do SOMETHING in the limited time she had to hack into his Mind Stone. I’d be willing to bet, while she couldn’t remove it from him, she did the next best thing…make a backup of Vision himself. Bruce theorizes this could be possible, and I doubt they would set that up for it to not work. I think Shuri and Bruce will make a new copy of Vision to join them in the journey back in time (hopefully this ends up being the all-white caped version we see in the classic Captain America arcade game).
This was one of the most hyped movies of all time, and I think for the most part they actually delivered BIGGER stakes than we thought were even possible. Marvel took the narrative limitations they had, that certain characters had no stakes due to toy sales making them unkillable, and figured out a way to throw that out the window. Now, in a year they will be stopping the car and going back to pick them up, but it was still a pretty amazing move. It’s going to be a LONG year until we see how this all plays out.
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