When The Avengers first premiered, it was a team of five men and one woman. It is 2019, and the final journey of that originating Avengers team has come to a close, the first major arc of the Marvel Cinematic Universe concluded.
There are certainly more women on the battlefield now, but are they getting their due?
[Spoilers for Avengers: Endgame]
The MCU has been struggling to add more female superheroes to its roster since it set up shop, and nowhere is this dearth more obvious than the big team-up films. But there are other questions here, too. Questions about who takes responsibility and when and why they do it. Questions about who gets to make decisions and who does the dirty work after the fact. Questions about whose lives are most valuable. And when all was said and done, Avengers: Endgame had no better plans for its female characters than any of the movies before it. In fact, many of them were worse off than they’d ever been, casting a dim light over the entire franchise.
It seems that we’re still in that awkward middle ground where companies and filmmakers understand that women are looking for more representation in stories that once-upon-a-time only showcased men, but they still haven’t figured out what that amounts to. This continues to be true no matter how many righteous haymakers Carol Danvers throws; we’re seeing change, but twenty-two films in, we’re still not much better off. Endgame unfortunately proves this even in the moments when it seems to think it’s doing well in how it handles female characters. To wit, toward the end of the film we’re treated to a moment where every woman on the battlefield pointedly stands together against Thanos, and while it mirrors a similar scene when Black Widow and Okoye defended Scarlet Witch in Infinity War, it smacks of overwrought lip service without substance. All the “see? we get it!” moments in the world don’t make for good storytelling or meaningful character arcs, and by the end of this massive tale, most of the women of the MCU have very little to show for all their hard work and sacrifice.
And so we have to start with Natasha Romanoff.
One of the original boy’s club crew, Natasha has never been given a solo film (the MCU was reported to be correcting this soon, but it will now likely be a prequel?). While some of the overarching plots struggled with how to handle her character, the former spy found her way by growing through each adventure, and being the person most cognizant of the Avengers as a found family. Her role in Captain America: Civil War was particularly painful on that front; while everyone else obsessed over who was wronging who, Natasha’s only true concern throughout the film was in trying to preserve the family and life she’d made for herself on the team. It is taken from her anyway, and she spends a couple years on the run with Steve and company, only to be there when Thanos snaps his fingers and murders half the universe.
In order to fix the mess five years later, the Avengers hatch a time travel plot that will allow them to retrieve the Infinity Stones powering Thanos’s gauntlet in their respective pasts, so that they can use the powers for themselves in the present. Teams are dispatched for each stone, with Natasha and her best friend Clint Barton set to grab the Soul Stone from the planet Vormir. While Nebula might suspect, no one is certain of how the Soul Stone is obtained, and it’s not until Nat and Clint find themselves on the planet that they learn a sacrifice is demanded—the person seeking the stone must trade another soul that they love in order to receive it. Because both Natasha and Clint fit the bill (being best friends for ages), they fight for it, racing each other to the precipice for the sacrifice. As they both hang off the edge of a cliff face and Clint is losing his grip on her, Natasha asks him to let her go. She wrenches herself away and falls to her death, one that cannot be undone when half the universe is snapped back into existence later on in the film.
That Natasha Romanoff is brave and selfless and heroic, no one would argue. But the connotations of her sacrifice speak far louder than the action itself. For one, Natasha lamented to Bruce Banner in Age of Ultron that she could not have children of her own while the Avengers were holed up on Clint’s farm. She is aunt to Clint’s children, and has folded herself into his family without a means to have her own. Clint loses that entire family to the Snap, and it is clearly implied that part of the reason Natasha wishes to sacrifice herself is to make sure that he is returned to them if the Avengers succeed in their plan. Thus, Natasha’s inability to have children renders her—in the eyes of the narrative, and in her own summation—“less valuable” in terms of survival. After she’s gone, Tony Stark asks if she had family they should notify, and it’s pointed out again that the Avengers were the only ones she called family. All of this adds up to make it seem that Natasha’s only true value was in loving the Avengers (and Clint) enough to be willing to take that leap for all of them.
This choice runs foul even further when we remember what it’s meant to contrast: Thanos sacrificing his daughter Gamora to get the Soul Stone in Infinity War. These are supposed to be juxtaposing moments, Gamora’s murder at the hands of her father now running alongside Natasha’s willing suicide, which is even more meaningful for the fact that both she and Clint wanted to be the one to take the fall. Any perceived truth to Thanos’s sacrifice should be completely undone by this version of events… yet it isn’t. If Natasha and Clint’s dueling desire to give their lives had resulted in neither of them having to die—if they had cancelled out the mechanism that released the stone by both being so willing—we would have had a far more potent condemnation of Thanos’s decision. And it needs to be that potent because Gamora’s death is already a circumspect exercise in the previous film, a seeming approval of Thanos’s “love” for a daughter he has only ever abused. Allowing Clint and Natasha to circumvent the process by the power of real love (and the love of a platonic and beautiful friendship between a woman and a man, no less) would have been a far more powerful message against Thanos’s toxic idea of family.
In the end, Natasha Romanoff is mourned but never celebrated. The story has too far to go, and Tony Stark’s epic death undercuts her own. The film ends on his funeral, and hers is never seen, mentioned, or noted. It’s almost as though she never existed at all.
We arrive at Carol Danvers, the first female Marvel superhero to headline a film (it only took a decade…). Carol is brilliant throughout Endgame, but she’s also underused because she’s not been given any time at all to acclimate to the group setting. This is not her farewell tour, so she only shows up in special bursts, powered by fists of space-energy and little else. The same is true of Okoye, who Marvel rightfully gave top billing to, but never the screen time to match. Wanda Maximoff also shows up briefly to flex her extraordinarily powerful magic muscles, but her only stake in the film is being pissed with Thanos for killing her boyfriend Vision. All her fury gets her nowhere, which is hardly surprising because these films have never known what to do with someone as powerful as the Scarlet Witch is meant to be. She’s always getting sidelined because dealing with her true skillset would make most of the other combatants seem superfluous. (Also hardly surprising is that her new upcoming television series with Vision is going to be set in the 1950s… about as far from the central action of the MCU as you can get.)
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Gamora and Nebula are pulled through the wringer and then some in Endgame, the former already dead and brought back from her past, the latter forced to confront an earlier and far crueler version of herself that she eventually murders. (And because the film seems to have no interest in creating any succinct rules around their time travel plot, it is completely unclear as to how that should affect Nebula going forward.) Both Nebula and Gamora are extremely important to the plot of Endgame, with Nebula’s appearance in the past accidentally notifying Thanos as to the Avengers’ plans, and Gamora’s decision to trust the future version of her sister being integral to the success of said plans. But the film seems to forget them once things get heated up; one brief re-meet of Peter Quill and Gamora disappears to who knows where, with Nebula left behind to hitch a ride again with the Guardians. We have no idea if the two said a proper goodbye to one another, or how they are both feeling now that they have to relearn their relationship all over again. The movie doesn’t seem concerned about that—but it does seem very concerned over Quill’s desire to track Gamora down.
Then there’s Valkyrie, who has been in charge of New Asgard since Thor went into a spiral of depression and binge-drinking. Though the film treats the God of Thunder terribly, Valkyrie doesn’t come out of the situation any better, as she works herself to the bone to keep the ship running for the sake of the Asgardian people. By the end, Thor abdicates the throne in her favor, noting that she has already been doing the job for him, and that she’s an excellent leader. These things are true, but Valkyrie also expressed a hatred of Asgardian monarchy when Thor met her first. And more to the point, no matter how good Val is at steering their people, she is essentially being made to shoulder Thor’s burden simply because he has decided he can’t handle it anymore. Rather than offering to help her set up a new form of government, or see that the transition of power goes smoothly, he just up and leaves all of his responsibilities on her plate.
Even the final romantic nod of the entire series can ring hollow: While we’re supposed to be happy for Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter finally getting their dance on at the end of this, it’s hard not to be a little insulted over all the film is choosing to ignore in that tender moment. It is unclear if any of Peggy’s former trials will come to pass with Steve Rogers back in her life, and the idea of all of her adventures—in her own series Agent Carter and beyond—being overwritten for a life in a cute suburb with her man is frankly just as depressing as them losing one another. Peggy Carter claims to know her value, but in this moment, it’s hard to tell if the MCU knows it, or if they ever cared about it at all. Love is truly grand, but shoehorning Peggy in there for a kiss when we get no time with her at all feels like a particular kind of cheat.
But there’s worse, even after all of that. Perhaps the most depressing lot is handed over to Pepper Potts and her daughter Morgan. It’s clear that the audience is supposed to feel happy (or at least contented) for Tony Stark, even in his death—he finally defeated Thanos, the guy who has been haunting his dreams and giving him anxiety attacks since the Battle of New York, and in the interim he got five solid years with his wife and his daughter before giving his life in service of the entire universe. He has the chance to fight alongside his wife in a suit of armor he created especially for her, and as he dies, Pepper promises that she and their daughter will be okay despite his absence. “You can rest now,” she tells him, and he takes her at her word.
This is one of fiction’s favorite noble ends, and it often sees a woman and a child who have to move on without a father and partner. And while it is great that Tony got to have some time with his daughter, she’s barely five years old, which means that her memory of him is bound to get fuzzy as she gets older. She is cheated out of that relationship while Pepper is left alone, after spending years panicked for Tony’s safety and well-being. It is the ending that Iron Man perhaps deserves, but it is not the ending that his family deserves, and there’s no way around that plain truth. But we’re conditioned to accept this as good and heroic tragedy, full of sorrow and therefore meaningful, rather than asking why these are always the people who pay the price for that heroism.
So while the Marvel Studios franchise films continue to add and promote new female heroes, while they insist that they will keep an eye toward diversity in the future, it’s hard to believe that we will be seeing much better from the majority of these stories any time soon. Women should get to work the center stage of these narratives, and more importantly, they should not bear the brunt of men’s choices and give up their own freedoms and stories in their favor. Thanos may have time traveled to try and retake the universe, but the real villain of Avengers: Endgame often felt like men absconding from their commitments and leaving everyone else to pick up the pieces.
Emmet Asher-Perrin will never be okay with Morgan losing her dad, sorry. You can bug him on Twitter, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
I agree that the heroine line up in end game captured the worst of what they were trying to do, but I don’t think that Black Widow’s sacrifice was an allusion to her infertility. Her arc (under served as it was) appeared more to me as her struggle to reconcile her past as an assassin with her current heroics. She sacrificed herself ahead of Hawkeye not just because he had a family, but because he saw her potential. It seemed more like a callback to Avengers, when she and Fury discuss their history.
Peggy Carter – We see her and Cap in a house. We see either them several years down the road, or after her early Agent Carter days, when she was in the apartments with all the other ladies. I hope he waited a few years and didn’t show up hours after he went into the ice because she should get some maturing years as well.
I disagree with so much in this article. The writer totally took things out of context.
One: I think that Nat’s storyline is great because she went from being the loyal assassin / spy for Shield, to making her own decisions to running the rescue operations around the galaxy all on her own. Yes the Avengers are her family, and yes she didn’t have a funeral of her own but they also didn’t have a body to bury. And I feel like the moment on the dock plus the other moments later down the line are a tribute to how much she means to the team.
Two: Gamora and Nebula. Of the two of them with the friendship wise Nebula was always the one who resisted Gamora’s help. We don’t need to see what she and Nebula are going to do next because we’ve already seen it, only this time it will be Nebula being more invested than Gamora is at this moment in time.
Three: Considering that most of the awesome female MCU characters got dusted, and the fact that so many arcs needed to be wrapped up in the final battle I thought that the moment when the women came together to protect Peter was a really sweet and empowering moment.
Four: Yes, Scarlett Witch is far too powerful for the MCU to handle properly but that’s a problem to take up with the creators not the directors. I thought that they handled her very well and even though she was fighting Thanos to avenge Vision, we have to remember that she had a hellishly bad childhood where her brother was her only thing and he died. Then she became part of the team and worked closely with and fell in love with Vision only to have him taken away from her too. Of course she’s going to be hell bent on revenge. Who wouldn’t?
Five: Captain Marvel… I’ll admit that I wanted her to do more against Thanos than she did but we have to remember that this movie was made before Captain Marvel was, and I have to wonder if they didn’t go with the ending where she didn’t play as much as a role. That being said, they should have known where they were going and made her have a better and bigger role than what we saw. But then again, going forward she is going to be the thread that ties them all together so maybe her character development and sense of teamwork will improve even more.
Six: Pepper and Morgan. Yes, it sucks that Morgan is going to grow up without her father and my heart breaks for Pepper because her worst fear has come to pass. However, she has been running Stark Industries for so long now that she has already shown herself to be a capable business woman. She has a strength within her which will mean that she will be just fine even without Tony, and she will make sure through recordings and pictures and stories that Morgan never forgets her father.
Seven: Steve Rogers and Peggy. Yes, we don’t know what time in Peggy’s life he returned, but I choose to believe that it was after the events of Agent Carter. Steve will know everything about her life, and how she is integral to the starting of Shield, so I doubt that he would do anything to jeopardize any of that. Plus, I always felt like the both of them were cheated out of the life that they should have had together due to Steve’s sacrifice. He was given a chance to go back into the past and be with her, and she accepted him back into her life and then proceeded to hide it from the world for the next sixty-odd years so that they could grow old together in peace. That’s a pretty kick-ass thing to have done if you ask me.
Thanks for pointing out the difference in how Tony and Natasha were mourned. It would have been a lot easier for me to come to terms with Nat’s sacrifice if that memorial scene hadn’t reenforced the idea that the male characters with families were more important than her.
I kinda just figured Steve was Peggy’s unnamed husband she mentions in Winter Soldier, but otherwise I generally agree. I do kinda think that “cold equations” would mean an actual living good father is better than a sympathetic aunt figure, but sacrificing Black Widow still seemed gratuitous. There are reasonable ways around the Sacrifice – in the moment I thought that Hawkeye would get the soul stone because he *already* had lost what he loved most, his family; or that because the Widow sacrificed herself instead of being sacrificed, she’d be rewarded with life.
Just a reminder of our commenting guidelines, and a clarification: accusing someone of lying or intentionally making bad faith arguments will be considered a personal attack. Disagree all you want with the ideas and opinions being expressed, but be civil and don’t cross the line into making these disagreements personal–thanks.
@1 It wasn’t an intentional invoking of her infertility, but we can’t get away from that clumsy dialogue in Age of Ultron which ties her worth to her ability to have a family. And we get a callback, unintentional though it was, to that with her dying so someone with kids can live for those kids. That still means her worth is measured by her womb contents, and it is all Joss Whedon’s fault. So thanks again, Joss. /s
As unfortunate as it is to lose her like that, I’ve never felt comfortable with Black Widow’s representational worth on the team. The black catsuit clad femme fatale is a cliche and stereotype that was a problematic one, basically a male fanservice character, way back before the MCU was even started and it is one which has only got more problematic with time. It is time for that type of character to cease existing entirely. I’m glad we didn’t get a solo movie with her, but I still want more female led movies in the genre. Maybe Squirrel-Girl, or the next Sony Spider-movie can be a Spider-Gwen solo. Or even reboot the X-verse with X23 taking up the Wolverine mantle. Or even a Gamora and Nebula adventure, separate from the rest of the GotG.
Just don’t let Joss write her, ever.
Prof Hulk tells Ant-Man and Rhodey that killing your past self does not change your future. Changes in the past create an alternate timeline. So Future Nebula shooting Past Nebula is not a problem. That’s one reason they don’t go back and kill baby Thanos. It wouldn’t change their timeline. Cap showing up as an old man is a problem though (one of many actually). He should have gotten old in an alternate timeline. He should have shown up on the platform as an old guy, or shouldn’t have shown up at all. So few films and stories can handle time travel in a consistent and logical manner. Most of them brakes their own rules and it turns into a hot mess.
As for Peggy I don’t think she would accept he role of a normal housewife. I don’t see why she could not have the same job living with Steve as living without him. She could still work at the SSR and later help found S.H.I.E.L.D., especially as Steve needs to stay under the radar.
The film ends on his funeral, and hers is never seen, mentioned, or noted.
I don’t get upset when people disagree on factors in a movie that don’t sit right. I’ve loved everything others have hated about Natasha’s story, but I get upset when people miss things, and then make judgements about factors in movies based on what they missed.
Natasha’s funeral was at the lake side by Avengers HQ. When Bruce throws the bench. When Steve is crying. That was Natasha’s waterside funeral(JUST LIKE TONY’S). Yes, she was remembered and mourned by the team, and yes we the audience was shown it.
And because the film seems to have no interest in creating any succinct rules around their time travel plot,
Well, they did create the rule that the stones correct any problems within timelines, but their timeline no longer has existing stones, so there is nothing to force a correction.
It is unclear if any of Peggy’s former trials will come to pass with Steve Rogers back in her life, and the idea of all of her adventures—in her own series Agent Carter and beyond—being overwritten for a life in a cute suburb with her man is frankly just as depressing as them losing one another.
I mean, it seemed pretty obvious that we now know that the reason she kept her husband such a secret in all this time, is that he was actually Steve impersonating someone else, and she hid him from her co workers to keep them from finding out. Agent Carter remains as awesome as ever, as if Steve would ever considering asking her to diminish her own shine to be with him!
But we’re conditioned to accept this as good and heroic tragedy, full of sorrow and therefore meaningful, rather than asking why these are always the people who pay the price for that heroism.
I lost my own father at the same age, and we had a lot fewer resources to provide for us after that, so I have to say get over it. Pepper and Morgan will be okay. Will Morgan remember her father? Probably not, I barely remember mine. And that isn’t a problem for me, because I don’t remember him, his death is not traumatic for me. Every other member of my family freaks out when my father is brought up in conversation, but it doesn’t bother me, because I don’t remember him enough to get all worked up about. Morgan was raised in love and kindness by her father, which will impact her for the rest of her life, whether she remembers him or not, and that’s what matters.
after spending years panicked for Tony’s safety and well-being.
I mean, I find hilarious, that after having five years of safety and security with Tony, she still pushes him to return to the Avengers. Kind of like that, after what all they went through, it gave Pepper some needed perspective here, instead of pushing for her own selfish desires that Tony prioritize being safe over everyone else’s security.
Of course, that’s part of the problem with how Pepper’s written. In the solo movies, she wants Tony to put it down, but in the team up movies, she understands that Tony has to be a part of something bigger than himself. I like the character growth Pepper showed in the movie
Regarding Steve & Peggy, remember that this is technically an alternate timeline where they got together. (And he found a way to get back long enough to pass on the shield.) So he wouldn’t have to hide. My headcanon for that timelines says that he and Peggy are in Shield together. They could go on mission together (or separately, depending on requirements). He already knows about Hydra, so he can clear that out before it gets to full strength. He knows about Bucky, so he can go rescue him.
I would love to see a “Steve & Peggy” series that explores all of this.
I would also like to point out that the remaining/new roster of MCU superheroes is a lot more balanced now. So maybe Endgame was also a way to end a lot of the male arcs, giving the female arcs their time to shine in the new phases.
I imagine the “Cap and Peggy living happily ever after” timeline as being quite a different world, where they fight side by side to root Hydra out of SHIELD, rescue Kennedy from assassination, rescue and rehabilitate Bucky, and even help Howard Stark perfect flying cars. “What a beautiful world this will be. What a glorious time to be free….”
@@@@@ 13 Don’t forget not making Stark treat Pym like shit or assuring Pym that his wife didn’t die in the quantum realm (or even preventing her going there in the first place, if an alternate way to stop that nuke can be found). Happy Pym = earlier discovery of the quantum realm and a way for Cap to return to OTL to give back the shield.
#12 thestudi is obviously following All New Marvel, which…….. is a questionable appoarch. Get rid of and change the old for a new audience
Because we don’t see any details about Cap’s happily ever after, I think it has to be taken on faith that it doesn’t screw up Peggy’s life and deals sensibly other ramifications. Given that the OP seems to be running short on faith in the movie, the dissatisfaction with Cap’s HEA isn’t surprising.
@@@@@ 9
If Cap went to live his Happily Ever After in a different timeline, then as long as Hank Pym is around to manufacture Pym particles and create a device like the one that was in Luis’ van, then Cap can go back to his timeline to say farewell once he gets old. He doesn’t need to return to the platform. He’s not returning, as the characters did once their mission was done, he’s going, like when they start their mission. Notice that a platform wasn’t required in 2012 New York, 1970 Shield facility, 2013 Asgard and so on. The characters just appeared somewhere they thought was important. And Cap thought that place near the platform was important, probably nearer the bench since he’s old now and sitting down feels better than standing up.
While it was nice to see Frigga get a moment with Thor, I wish we’d gotten a bit more Jane Foster. (Although that may have been down to what Natalie Portman was willing to do for the film.) And, more importantly, where’s Darcy?!?!?
The “woman power” shot felt like needless pandering, and the movie as a whole was a 6/10 to me. But I think Black Widow’s sacrifice was the correct one.
Black Widow is a sexist relic, the femme fatale spy in combat stilettos and skin tight costume and that trope needed to go. In Avengers, she allowed to grow from a creature of self-interest into a teammate, a leader, and finally being capable of a pure selfless act. Her story arc was done; it was time to let her go.
Cap getting a happily ever after was cheap. Sweet, but cheap.
If we go along the theory that Steve went back to the OTL past and lived there (which I disagree, that’s not how time travel work in the movie, they always go to a different timeline, an alternate universe that is changed as soon as they step on it) in a closed time loop, then nobody ever heard of that Steve Rogers after he met Peggy and danced. So it’s much, much more likely that he became a stay-at-home husband (in the 1950s and for the next 6 decades) and Peggy Carter lived her life as the MCU showed it, with her being founding director of SHIELD and so on. He’s the one that needs to stay low and meet as few people as possible, not her. Also history has to repeat what Steve knows, so he would encourage her to lead a very active life, professionally.
I don’t buy that he went to the same timeline because Steve would try to alter things he knew was wrong, like Zola being part of SHIELD, other agents of HYDRA, Bucky being tortured, lots of bad relationships that led to suffering and even supervillains down the road (Stark x Pym, Stark x Stark, would warn Banner not to try to do stuff, would save Nat earlier from a lifetime of regret, etc). That was his character. He knows he can’t make it not happen in his timeline, it’s history, like killing baby Thanos, but he can make one timeline better, an adopted one, and live on it,.
I actually loved that more narrative time was devoted to Thor’s most important familial relationship. So much narrative strife over his relationship with his father and brother, now it’s finally time for Frigga to get her due.
Regarding the HEA timeline, Cap also knows of the existence of Wakanda. If he can get them to come out of their shell early, just imagine the research they can do together. Imagine if Wakanda tech had been in New York when the Chitauri invaded. Oh, and we’ll just keep that scepter, thank you. Now 3 stones are on Earth. And Wakanda tech combined with Steve’s knowledge of the past, combined with the Shield research…..Thanos would get wiped out very quickly if he tried to attack.
I agree with every point in the article. I was SO disappointed they used time travel as a plot device. When the character have to talk the audience into investing in the idea, you know you have a problem. As for Cap, I’d have thought Karen Gillian would have spoken up in a meeting and said, “hey, that’s basically how my Doctor Who character arc ended.” But alas.
Then there’s Thor, not to mention the Hulk. Turning them into comic relief was an injustice and frankly, an insult to all the work the actors did to bring them to life.
I’m sad about Endgame. But I realize Marvel made choices I don’t agree with. They did it all well. I just didn’t like it. Millions did. I wanted more Captain Marvel, I wanted more Dr. Strange. Hell, I wanted Doctor Who to show up to give everyone a talking to about time travel. That is the only show in which time travel works for me. Not long ago, Twitter ran a poll on worst tropes in SFF. Time travel won by a wide margin. And there it was in Endgame. Sigh.
Oh well. I can still hope Godzilla is a great movie and that Star Wars get IX right.
@8 The bedroom scene in Age of Ultron is clumsily written(and somehow directed even worse) but there are two different dimensions to it. The first part is about the potential relationship between Banner and Romanov. Bruce’s reluctance to be romantically involved isn’t because he can’t have kids, but because of the Hulk. His self view is shaped by his circumstance. He defends this view by relating that he can’t have a family, assuming that’s what Natasha wants. She rejects that view, she can’t have kids either, to undercut his argument. She also sees herself as a monster because of the things she’s done, not her biology. Her comment is supposed to read as an appeal to empathy, but it comes across as gross and lazy.
This is part of the larger injustice done to Black Widow. She was set up well to subvert women-in-action-movie tropes. She wasn’t just the femme fatale, or the emotional center of the group, or a battle babe. Instead of writing her to be something new, or independant of convention, different writers took whatever they wanted from tropes and threw them in. She came across differently in every movie she appeared in, with much less of a growth cycle then any of her male counterparts.
P.S. I believe they still plan on doing the Black Widow movie. It will probably be a prequel though. =(
@23, it’s Gillan, not Gillian.
Thanks caddan. Typing on a phone. My bad.
Consider: Cap returned all the stones to the EXACT moment they were taken (per Banner’s promise to The Ancient One). If the EXACT moment the Soul Stone was taken was the EXACT moment that Natasha sacrificed herself for the stone, it might be possible to nab her the EXACT moment that her soul began to leave her body, jump back through the quantum realm with her, and resuscitate her.
Just a quick note regarding Tony and Pepper’s relationship, and her change in attitude towards him “giving up the life” – I do think it reflects a growth in Pepper’s character, but I also think this is reflective of how Tony has changed as well. For a long time, his not being able to stop making new suits and taking up the fight was an unhealthy symptom of his own PTSD. Certainly that was the case in Iron Man 3 and Age of Ultron. By the time this film rolls around, though, that’s no longer true – Tony fights the good fight now simply because he has become that person, a hero who is always going to defend the world against those who want to destroy it. And I think Pepper recognizes that.
Otherwise, I pretty much agree wholeheartedly with @3 Angelica’s take on, well, pretty much everything.
This opinion piece seems to me to be determined to take the dimmest possible view of the treatment of women in Endgame. The writer is entitled to her opinion, but I think she is wrong.
Endgame is not a film about the women of Marvel, but it seems overly critical to judge it as if it were meant to be. It it the end of the arc for at least 2 of the main male characters. How unsatisfying the story would be if Marvel were to suddenly decide to sideline them to focus on the women. I want more women-centred fantasy / SF, but in their own vehicles and in their own terms. I say this as a woman, btw.
The idea that Stark’s death is somehow selfish because it leaves his family to suffer is not very consistent with the in-world logic. There were 14 million timelines in which they all failed after all; and Thanos made clear that the consequences of failure were not them getting to carry on living happily. Iron Man had to die or his family would have been killed along with everyone on earth. So yes it’s crap to have to live without him, but it’s better than being dead.
Black Widow did not die because her childless life had less value. I can’t imagine watching that film and taking that away from it. She spent 5 years searching for the friend who saved her and then she died to give him – and everyone else – a chance at salvation. And I think they didn’t give her a funeral because the other avengers weren’t ready to let her go yet. But that’s my personal feeling about the scene – they felt cheated by the finality and isolation of her death. It’s what makes it powerful.
Captain Marvel couldn’t be around much in the film because she’s too super-powered. And her stories are still to come. She turned up: turned the tide of the battle, was spectacular, almost got Thanos … but imagine for a second she had stopped him? In story terms it would feel like cheating because she didn’t have enough of an arc. If she kills Thanos in this story she’s a great big Deus Ex. If she has a real arc it’s nit a film about the original avengers anymore.
Valkyrie is going to make changes. Way to go Val. How crap that she gets to take command rather than having Thor be around #sarcasm. It’s not like he has any government or anything to hand over really though … she’s been in command since he locked himself away. He just gave her his blessing. It was sweet.
And Gamora seems likely to be a focus of Guardians 3 so I expect story reasons led to her disappearance.
Lastly, I loved the Peggy Carter series SO MUCH. I think the author enjoyed it too. How is it possible to imagine that Peggy gives up being awesome and kicking butt just because she got Cap back? It’s a misjudgement of her character to think she’d settle for being a suburban housewife.
I get it if Endgame wasn’t the film you wanted: it wasn’t 100% what I wanted (really really hated leaving Thor where he was without knowing if there’s another film with him coming). But judged on the article above there’s no version of it that could satisfy the author. That’s pretty sad if you have an emotional investment in it.
@23, Regardless of what happened on Who, that is literally the ending for Cap every Cap fan has been clamoring for(not necessarily that he gets a life with Peggy, but that he gets a chance to live his life).
@24, She also sees herself as a monster because of the things she’s done, not her biology.
THANK YOU!
Tasha’s talk was not about her infertility making her monster. She was told it would make killing easier, but the look on her face belies that. The fact that she believed that, is makes her a monster. The things she’s done, make her a monster.
But her infertility isn’t what defines her, it’s literally just a part of the conversation about why Bruce’s concerns about children aren’t relevant to a conversation about a possible relationship. And I hate that so many people read that into that discussion.
If they make another Agent Carter show, they could make a running joke about her husband that no one sees. Kind of like Norm’s wife Vera on the old Cheers TV show…
I mean, I guess, to me, this movie had so much I’ve wanted from movies in re women, that it boggles me people will still find stuff to hate.
I mean there is a diversity of women in this movie, with diverse motives! There are women stoically holding the world together, and talking about things that aren’t BOYS, while the men fall to pieces and can’t cope! There are women in combat, and women holding the home fort. There are women using compassion and empathy to sway their enemies, not violence and anger.
Like, it doesn’t matter if you think Wanda’s story and fury is too focused on her loss of Vision, because it’s NOT THE ONLY STORY.
Back when Tasha and Wanda were our only two, yeah it mattered. But there are so many now! We can have girls who are boy crazy, and girls who aren’t! And we do! We can have girls who make the sacrifice play, and girls who look out for themselves! And we do!
THIS IS WHAT WE’VE BEEN TRAINING FOR!!
Like that Girl Power Splash Scene. Just 5 years ago, we couldn’t have done that scene! That’s how far we’ve come, and how quickly, we went from only two women to almost 20!!!
I mean, this article is like, this is how all these women were done wrong, and I’m just like, look at all these women, and the varying stories that they get to represent.
So, this article seems to be hunting for grievances. And its true – the women vs Thanos moment felt forced and fan-service but so did a bunch of other fan service moments like Cap with the hammer. That the screenwriters have been spending too much time reading Reddit, is a reasonable criticism.
But overall, I think this is an effort to misconstrue the message of the movie. First Captain Marvel got little screen time for development reasons – this film was produced first, and Marvel had no idea how popular she would be. In addition, her personality wasn’t well established – she’s a real straight laced stiff here, but a smartass with a wicked sense of humor in Captain Marvel (and I strongly prefer the latter).
> Valkyrie also expressed a hatred of Asgardian monarchy when Thor met her first
This is true, but the whole point is that it wasn’t a dislike of the monarchy as an institution. It was because the royal family were jerks. Odin and Hela to start with. But Thor and Loki didn’t help. Valkyrie thought she could do better than they could, and she did. She deserved to be Queen of Asgard because of who she was not who her father was.
For Natasha – she wasn’t worth less because she didn’t have a family. She did have a family and she gave her life for them. She didn’t get fridged or throw her life away so we could feel angry – she had agency. The only thing I’m skeptical of, is that given Clint’s obviously precarious mental state, how this didn’t give him a psychotic break. Remember, he’d been assuaging his pain by running around murdering people. This is not a picture of a person well equipped to deal with loss of a loved one.
Scarlet Witch was written reasonably for canon and story – for her, Visions death has occurred moments ago. She’s very powerful but a glass cannon, and she closed into melee range with Thanos.
I think the author ignores the huge picture here. The whole argument seems to stem from Natasha’s death and lack of effects. Everything else argued falls apart with any kind of logical thinking outside of the handling of Black Widow.
I too was a bit surprised that Natasha didn’t receive a proper farewell beyond Clint and Scarlett’s conversation about her and Vision (where’s the complaints that Vision didn’t get a proper farewell?). But then I thought about it a little longer and realized Tony and Steve receive the most attention at the end of the film because this is Chris Evans and RDJ’s bowing out of the MCU. They both have said they won’t be returning. Scar Jo on the other hand will be returning in her own movie (FINALLY!). Her story isn’t finished.
I mean, the thing with Tasha for me, is that she wasn’t going to LET Clint sacrifice himself, and she doesn’t fail.
PERIOD
She has been shown to be the most competent Avenger. Who closed the portal to space? Tasha. Who learned about Quantum Physics to make conversation on a date? Tasha. Who spoke a dead language? Tasha. Who was such a good spy she spoofed Tony Stark? Tasha.
So of course, she was going to go down. Not even Clint could have stopped her. Because Tasha was an unstoppable force, who was only ever going to go out on her terms. And her terms, were doing for Clint what he did for her, while ensuring that adorable boy named for her still got to see his Dad.
“All the “see? we get it!” moments in the world don’t make for good storytelling or meaningful character arcs.” Thank you for putting words to some of the reasons I felt so let down by this movie.
I especially agree that Natasha should have woken up in the water with Clint on Voromir. Sure it’s in character for them to both try to sacrifice themselves and for Nat to “win,” but it would have been a nice moment of rebuttal to Thanos’ idea of family and a stronger contrast to Gamora’s death. Sure, the stone’s acceptance of Thanos’ “love” for Gamora shows that not all inanimate objects are good judges of character, but they could have rectified a bit of that with Natasha’s survival.
(I’ve pretty much blocked the awkward line about Nat not being able to have kids and being a monster out of my mind since I know that’s not what was intended there. I’ve blocked out most of AoU to be honest.)
Steve marrying Peggy felt false, or at least unearned in the narrative. Sure it sets up another timeline where Steve got to live happily ever after with his best girl and I have faith Peggy was a badass with or without Steve at her side. I don’t like it because the choice to go back denies Cap the character arc he hints at in the beginning of the film when he comments that he and Natasha haven’t moved on. Plus I don’t buy that Steve Rogers would leave his 21st century friends to clean up the mess that the snap made. That mess didn’t go away when the dusted people were brought back, it just changed. And he left Bucky! We had two movies about how Steve would move heaven and earth to protect his best friend, about how much he missed him. I would have liked to see Steve-the-counselor give Sam the shield so he can focus on leading his support grou. There are multiple ways to save the world, after all.
I apologize if anyone has said this, but I’ve not had the time to read through the excellent discussion, and I want to say it before it flees my overworked and allergy-clogged brain. If Clint had died instead of Natasha, this article would have damned the writers for not allowing a woman to make the same decision. Sometimes, we are too eager to look for slights. Natasha went out brave, strong, loving, and true. A fitting ending for this character.
I came across some very good discussions of the time travel rules for this movie. Most are in agreement on these points. Essentially, the past CANNOT BE CHANGED. No matter what the present day characters do in the past, the timeline of these AVENGERS movies WILL NOT CHANGE.
What happens is that moment when the present day character interferes in a major way with the past, the timeline splits into two different streams. One is the timeline of the AVENGERS movies. The other is a new timeline. So, present Steve and past Peggy are now in a different timeline where she can very well start SHIELD with Steve and stop HYDRA from infiltrating it. He can also go rescue Bucky, too, before he’s turned into the Winter Soldier. (Yeah!)
Old Steve had to move from his new timeline back into his old timeline to give Sam his shield.
Yes, it’s a bit confusing but far less than trying to retcon the AVENGERS timeline.
What happens is that moment when the present day character interferes in a major way with the past, the timeline splits into two different streams.
Except the Ancient One refuted that. Once the stones are returned the timeline, the separate streams are reconciled back into one.
Which means that post-Endgame Steve Rogers was always in our timeline, abiding in retirement, hiding from himself when he’s awakened from the ice, secure in the knowledge that it was all going to work out eventually, and that if he interfered in any way, he was putting everything at risk.
I mean, this literally leaves a lot of questions, like what about the fact that Thanos has now died prior to hiring Ronan to get the Power Stone, so perhaps the theory that Tony returned them to their own time instead of dusting them is true.
But the idea of separate time streams was raised and refuted by the movie, so I don’t think that’s the solution. Post-Endgame Steve was in our timeline all along.
But again, no one bothered to address what’s going to happen to the Post Endgame timeline now that the Infinity Stones are gone.
@39 “I hate temporal mechanics!” ” –Chief Engineer Miles O’Brien, STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE
Wasn’t the Old One talking about the AVENGERS’ timeline being kept whole, not all timelines? That’s the only real timeline that’s important as far as the writers are concerned. It’s also the timeline where the time stone is used by Dr Strange to stop Dormammu who could wipe out existence.
The reason I really like this theory is that it makes sense from a story point of view. It leaves the AVENGERS timeline untouched yet allows for Steve to have his happy ending and Loki to sneak off alive.
OP:
I know we’d all rather forget that Daredevil and Elektra happened… but they did. Long before this “cinematic universe” thing existed.
OP:
These are certainly true statements from an Obi-wan Kenobi point of view. The first one is simply called irony, when it happens to characters in stories. Which is all the time. Regardless of gender. And she didn’t exactly seem broken up about his decision. He’d already lost the trust of his people. Probably before he ever came back to remove Loki from the Throne. She picked up what he’d already tossed aside years earlier. This scene just acknowledges that. I’m pretty sure that Val has been shown to be pretty loud and opinionated. If she’s wanted him to stay around and help, she’d have told him. Without hesitation. And he’d likely have done what she said.
OP:
You seem to not have understood ( or perhaps you understood, and just think they were wrong? ) what the Ancient One and Bruce said. You can’t travel through the Quantum Realm back in time and change the future. As soon as you change something, you create a new timeline, and you are returned to your original timeline with no changes being made.
This was a necessary plot point for the film, or they just could have traveled back to 2012 and grabbed one of the stones and hid it in the future. This would have prevented Thanos from getting them all. So they had to establish temporal mechanics that prevent that easy win. And they did. And they were consistent with it.
The Peggy Carter we saw in Agent Carter is the Peggy Carter of the main timeline. Cap lived out his life in an alternate timeline with an alternate Peggy. Then returned to the main timeline to give Falcon the shield. They didn’t explicitly say that Cap traveled from an alternate timeline to be there, but they were very, very clear about the rules the movie was playing by, at least in regards to Quantum Realm timeline travel.
The choices made for Nat in this movie were consistent with her character. The damage was done in Age of Ultron, through ham-fisted dialog.
Of course I have no issue whatsoever with you feeling how you feel about the movie. I can totally see where it comes from. I can feel the frustration you feel at a decade of this franchise shortchanging women pouring out of your words. But there are a number of examples in this article where it seems like what you were feeling during the movie clouded the picture of what actually happened on screen. But then again, like any work of art — even commercial art — the work and the message isn’t completed until someone consumes it, bringing their own feelings and perspective to it. The Endgame you experienced was never going to be the Endgame I experienced.
@39, @41:
I’ll have to watch the movie again, but I’m pretty sure the Ancient One never talked about merging the timelines back together. Her concern was that her timeline wouldn’t have the Time Stone to defend against Doramammu. I can see how the SFX on screen at the time (when bruce returned the Stone, and the alternate branch went away) was confusing. But they were already in another timeline, as soon as they went back. The SFX the Ancient one created was showing a branch of HER reality where the Time Stone wasn’t present. Not a branching off the main timeline. Banner was showing what would happen if he returned the Time Stone to the same general moment it was taken. That alternate timeline would no longer have the branch where the Time Stone wasn’t available to defeat Doramammu.
I think this article is bang on.
I also think the way this film treated Natasha, Nebula, and Gamora’s abusive past was a problem too.
The movie undercuts all three.
Nat, by killing herself to give Clint redemption and family, is saying the ultimate redemption for her abusive training and life as Black Widow is death for another. Her summation is not the good as a heroine she did, no, it’s down to sacrificing for one man’s journey to continue.
Gamora loses her found family arc and build-up from previous movies thanks to this one. She’s looking to be reduced to a quest object for Quill and the guardians in the future. Why she abandoned Nebula at the end is also never explained.
Neither Gamora or Nebula get any revenge or rebuttal against Thanos’s abusive love. Thanos’ abuse is brought back in his remarks to Nebula in the hut, but she gets no response. His murder of Gamora justified in absense of consequence as the soul stone deal appears to be valid. Nebula kills her past abused self, which is sad and sends what message regarding redemptive chances to women?
Nebula also gets to have the plot burden of being responsible for Thanos’ catching the time travel plot, and gets to be repeat tortured for it.
No, a pandering group shot of women doesn’t equal respecting them.
Also, Peggy is done served poorly by Cap’s or the final decision of his arc in this movie. It reduces her to only his love interest, and that’s the only story beat we see her filling. Having a picture of him at her desk in the 70s? WTF.
The time travel in this film does not make sense so it’s a guess to the correct end for that final scene of Steve’s. The finale of your franchise and character. Either way Steve and the MCU is erasing a past legacy of the Peggy he’s known since 2012, that we’ve known since First Avenger, through Agent Carter and the franchise, because the scenes in Winter Soldier do conflict with Endgame’s solutions. He’s her husband all along, and lying or invalidating that past and the moral character of Peggy, by being her husband during a time when she was fighting to make a better world through Shield, while he knows it’s black roots in Hydra and other awful world outcomes, and changing nothing. Or he’s in an alternate timeline erasing a past legacy of the Peggy he’s known since 2012, disavowing any growth or understanding that he can’t go backwards in progression as a person, that she moved forward from him as her own person, and saying so long to all the foundations he’s built for himself in the present, while robbing his alternate self of a relationship with that Peggy, and the film is ignoring her as having any view of that other than great, got my dance.
Calling any of that a happy or deserved end? Respectful of Peggy? I loathe this movie.
A small correction, it’s not Cap that asks if Nat has family that needs to be notified, he’s the one that answers they were her family.
The lack of proper ceremony for Natasha bothered me, but what bothered me more was that she didn’t get her big send off the way cap and Tony did. Cap’s send off wasn’t the end, it was wielding mjolnir, a moment clearly designed to make fans cheer. And Tony got the counter snap and final qwip, also meant to get big feels from the audience. Natasha got a death that another character already got, and no big “hell yes” moment. I think it would be fair to say much of Endgame was written to let us say good bye to Tony and Steve, while Natasha did not get the same level of treatment
Also, when Cap returned the soul stone, it seems like he might have some words for its “guardian” – that’s a pretty big thing to ignore…
Romanoff’s death was wrong all over, and I love your idea for how sparing her would have been a better in-your-face response to the Gamora problem.
The rest though, it seems like spin. The Gamora-Quill relationship promises some rich drama, it’s better left to Guardians 3 than if it had been stuffed into here. If Thor and Valkyrie roles were reversed, we might decry the that only a man would be seen fit to manage the throne without any transition help. Try role-reversing again with Cap and Peggy, and I don’t think we’d question Cap still going on to do heroic things if Peggy was suddenly reinserted in his earlier life.
When Spock died in Star Trek II (to name one of a zillion examples), I don’t remember anyone pointing out the unfairness of that death to the rest of the crew, his ‘family’; this argument also kind of loses me. But what I do note here, is that here is how wrong “fridging” is when it’s the woman who dies. The man should be focussed on wishing her peace, and mourning her, without conveniently turning into a titan of revenge every time and making it all about him.
@@@@@ 39, 41, 43
I agree with AnthonyPero. The movie was pretty clear that you can’t change the past and come back to a different future/present, like in Back to the Future. The movie said that out loud.
I think what people are getting confused about is that the characters called it a “time heist”, or at least Scott Lang did. Of course, Scott Lang doesn’t understand the mechanics, like other characters do. The proper term is “alternate reality time heist”. As soon as the characters set foot on the past they are on an alternate timeline that will not affect theirs, except for the stuff that they can get back, like a baseball glove.
What the Ancient One was telling Bruce was that if he took the Time Stone, or any other Infinity Stone, he’d be fucking her reality, which she had vowed to protect. When Dormammu came to attack they’d be defenceless, for example. Even the Soul Stone, which was not used for anything good, could fuck their reality if absent because the Infinity Stones have some kind of stabilizing effect on the universe. Her reality would suffer in the future. What Bruce counterargued was that if he came back just a little bit later and gave it back there’d be no adverse effect and her reality would be fine. She then said that they’d need to survive for that to happen (maybe she saw 2014 reality Thanos coming to attack them?). Then he said Doctor Strange gave the Time Stone willingly. That convinced her. Strange saw the future and saw that they succeeded if he did just that, then they could borrow those stones and give them back after their success.
I disagree with quite a lot of what the article says and many of the comments. Much of which has been covered in the comments already. But I want to point out a couple of things.
1. The author, in defending her position on Tony leaving Pepper alone to raise Morgan, says that the child should not have to grow up without a father, and Pepper shouldn’t have to bear that kind of burden. But when it comes to Clint vs. Nat dying she seemed to have no problem with Clint’s three kids growing up without a father, and leaving his wife alone with that burden. So the argument seems to void itself out. It’s either OK for a child to grow up without a father and a wife to be a single mother, or it isn’t.
2. In the Steve/Peggy discussion, many people, including the author, seem to think that Steve went back to when he went into the ice and thus took away Peggy’s adventures to live the quiet life. But that doesn’t make sense. Steve was returning the stones to exactly (or at least approximately) when they were taken. It only makes sense that he would have returned the power stone last and then stayed in that time to live his life with Peggy. Thus, she would already have had the”Agent Carter” adventures and have already started SHIELD. Nothing to be remiss about in that.
3. For those saying that Nat should have come back with the stone and woken up in the water with Clint, it’s an interesting theory. But to me that would have felt more like a cheat, and would have done a disservice to her sacrifice. You don’t get this information from the MCU movies, but based on comics-lore, the Soul stone contains the souls within it. I believe that is what Wanda is referencing when she tells Clint that “she knows”. She is saying that Nat became a part of the soul stone and thus would know of the success. (It also leaves open the possibility of her returning to the current time and thus giving her a solo movie without it being a prequel.)
4. Lastly, the opinion on Nat seems to be conflicting. Everyone seems to want Black Widow to have her own movie, but then turn around and say that the Femme-fatale, spy in a catsuit, trope should be done away with and are glad it’s gone. But that “trope” is what the character is. To have her own movie, where the character acts and behaves completely different would not be a Black Widow movie. It would be someone else.
The movie was pretty clear that you can’t change the past and come back to a different future/present, like in Back to the Future.
I am not arguing that Steve went back and changed the past, I don’t know why people keep bringing that up.
And again, The Ancient One explains that what prevents that from happening is the Stones.
As soon as the characters set foot on the past they are on an alternate timeline that will not affect theirs,
Because the stones will fix the timeline, not because they went to another one.
You all are reading something into the diagram she made, that isn’t there, the existence of other timelines. If she was only trying to protect her particular timeline it would not matter what was done with the stone. The darkness of the alternate timeline indicated it was a problem because of its existence, and the absence of a stone(notice it gets dark immediately after Bruce takes the stone, not some part further down the split that indicates when Strange would use it against Dormammu), not just because of how it pertained to her timeline, but literally the flow of time. The entire point of her diagram was to caution against creating any alternate timelines, not to just accept them as a matter of fact, and that they could be meddled with willy nilly because it won’t impact their timeline. That’s the opposite of what she was saying.
@49. I don’t want a BW movie, partly because of the sexist tropes involved with character, but mainly because I find spy movies boring (last spy movie I enjoyed was Man From UNCLE, and until then it was Die Another Day). There are plenty of other female characters Marvel could use, especially now, or even -heresy(!) alert- come up with a brand new character for a Marvel movie first, before porting her to the comics afterwards. If nothing else that would get a tonne of free press attention and word of mouth.
Edit: I think part of the reason there were so many cries back in the beginning for a BW solo movie was that she seemed to be pretty much the only female hero visible at the time. She was number one in a field of one. When representation is so thin on the ground you take what you can get, plus she was the only one of the original line up who didn’t get their own movie (except Clint).
I think that the clamouring for a BW movie started dying down after Iron Man 3, when Pepper as an Iron Woman started seeming a lot more viable, and it has been getting less fervent ever since. There still needs to be more female headliners in Marvel’s line up, but we can do better than the hackneyed black catsuit femme fatale now. Much, much, much better. Black Widow’s time was four/eight years ago and she missed the window.
@52. That’s fair. Spy flicks aren’t for everyone. But I have heard about the trope argument from more than just you, so it wasn’t you specifically I was referring to. Even broad brushes don’t paint every inch. By “everyone” I just meant “in general” And yes, there certainly are more female characters in the Marvel Universe. I was simply responding to the clamor that has been around for a long time for a Black Widow movie.
For me, the point was never about how time travel worked or if it made sense in the context of the movie. I hated the idea of using it at all. I found it lazy and cliched. Endgame is now just another movie in a long list of time travel movies. IMO, hey should have done something different.
@50:
I’m struggling to see how that makes sense, but am willing to postpone it until I see the movie again. My struggle is that you either have alternate timelines, or you don’t. As soon as they travel back to the past, they are either a) doing exactly what happened in their own timeline (i.e, the 2023 Avengers were always in New York in 2012), and time is a closed loop or b) the 2023 Avengers were NOT in New York in 2012 the first time around, and therefore them traveling back to 2012 creates a new timeline the moment they do it.
If its a) then nothing they do is going to create a new timeline. They always take the time stone from the Ancient One in 2012, and they always return it to her, and there is no danger of a new timeline being formed. This isn’t workable given the rest of what happens in the story. If a) were true, then Thanos couldn’t have traveled from 2014 to 2023, because then the Snap would have never happened and you are firmly in paradox land.
The entire reason the writers had Professor Hulk say the stuff about Back to the Future and other time travel movies was to establish that there would be no paradoxes. The writers gave an interview yesterday where they said the consulted physicists and that’s what they said, so they wrote the dialogue for Bruce to provide the underpinning for the movie:
It’s crucial to your film that in your formulation of time travel, changes to the past don’t alter our present. How did you decide this?
MARKUS We looked at a lot of time-travel stories and went, it doesn’t work that way.
McFEELY It was by necessity. If you have six MacGuffins and every time you go back it changes something, you’ve got Biff’s casino, exponentially. So we just couldn’t do that. We had physicists come in — more than one — who said, basically, “Back to the Future” is [wrong].
MARKUS Basically said what the Hulk says in that scene, which is, if you go to the past, then the present becomes your past and the past becomes your future. So there’s absolutely no reason it would change.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/movies/avengers-endgame-questions-and-answers.html
So, Professor Hulk’s understanding of how it works, in spite of him saying its not his field of expertise, is exactly what the screenwriters intended. Now, I’m not at all convinced that they understood what the physicists were saying to them, lol, because that sure as hell sounds like a closed time loop to me. But they come out and say that they wrote the dialog Professor Hulk says based on that.
@55
The fact that they had to break the 4th wall to explain their plot device – to me – says they knew they had to differentiate their story from ALL the other time travel stories. That right there should have been a red flag to them. They shouldn’t have done it.
@55, The way I read it, is that alternate timelines could be created, but that they were bad, and shouldn’t be created. That by going back in 2012, they would be creating alternate timelines, but by returning them they would be the returning to just one prime timeline.
So the way I figure it, Steve returns all the stones, thus reconciling to just one prime timeline, but coming from a time period without stones, he can stay. Now, if he interferes with time, he would create a new timeline. But, IMO, he would be resolved to not do anything. He knows how things turn out through his inaction, and sticks to that, so a new timeline isn’t created.
However, if that is true, that means this older Steve has been in our time all along, and I am fine with that. This is what retirement would look like for him, and I can’t conceive of any other way he’d be able to put the shield down.
Now, again, this leaves us the problem of 2012 Loki with the Tesseract. But if to reconcile the timeline, the stones could just throw him into 2023, after the stones are destroyed.
@45: You’re right, thanks–we’ve updated the article!
@57:
But how things turn out aren’t what I think Cap would ever call “good.” Millions died during Ultron. Millions died during the first chitauri invasion. Bucky assassinated many people. Even though the Snap got undone, millions upon millions of people still died in the fallout. They aren’t coming back.
I’m pretty sure that Cap would take all his foreknowledge and do things differently in a new timeline. The only way it makes sense to NOT try to change things for the better is if it’s the Main timeline, as you initially thought it was, and has now been confirmed to not be the case by both the writers and directors.
In a new Timeline where Steve has both foreknowledge of the future, as well as access to the founder of SHIELD to pass this information on to, there is more than a strong possibility that Earth is far more ready for both the Chitauri and Thanos. I can’t imagine Cap NOT trying to take that route.
The Russo brothers answered some of our questions about how time travel work in Avengers: Endgame. Cap did create an alternate reality when he went back to Peggy, and he probably helped a lot of people there. So in the main reality we saw Peggy still lived the adventures we saw. In that other reality Peggy and Cap lived new adventures, like a couple. That doesn’t undermine her character to me.
https://bgr.com/2019/04/30/avengers-endgame-ending-russo-brothers-on-captain-america-iron-man/
Q: Peggy Carter was probably already married and in her mid-40s in 1970, in that case, what year was it that Captain America went back to dance with her?
A: We can’t answer it, for now, this is a story that happened in an alternate reality. Maybe it will be revealed in the future.
Q: Did Captain America’s action at the end affect the timeline? Does that mean there was a time where two CA existed in a same universe?
A: To me, Captain America’s action in the end wasn’t the fact he wanted to change anything; it’s more like he has made a choice. He chose to go back to past and lived with the one he loved for the rest of his life. The time travel in this movie created an alternate reality. He lived a completely different life in that world. We don’t know how exactly his life turned out, but I’d like to believe he still helped many others when they were needed in that world. Yes, there were two CA in that reality, it’s just like what Hulk said, what happened in the past has already happened. If you go back to past, you simply created a new reality. The characters in this movie created new timeline when they went back to the past, but it had no effect to the prime universe. What happened in the past 22 movies was still canon.
Q: [Endgame’s] plot, is it a parallel universe or a closed time loop?
A: Nope, not a time loop. Both Ancient One and Hulk were right. You can’t change the future by simply going back to past. But it’s possible to create a different alternate future. It’s not butterfly effect. Every decision you made in the past could potentially create a new timeline. For example, the old Cap at the end movie, he lived his married life in a different universe from the main one. He had to make another jump back to the main universe at the end to give the shield to Sam.
But how things turn out aren’t what I think Cap would ever call “good.”
Compared to Thanos showing up in 1969 a week after we landed on the moon, and wiping us out before the Avengers are created, because if Cap can travel through time and change stuff, he can too.
The risk is greater than the reward here, and you keep ignoring that.
I mean, haven’t you read any fiction and mythology that points out how foreknowledge is a curse when you try to act on it? I mean, if you haven’t, I know Steve has, I’ve seen his bookshelves.
To further elaborate, no millions dying in Ultron isn’t a good thing. But after half the universe stops existing, Steve definitely has a better appreciation for scale, and for unintended consequences.
Again, from 1946-2012, the Earth survived without his help. He knows if he isn’t around when the Chituari invade, the Earth may not survive. Indicating that he’d risk changing the future so that he wouldn’t be around in that case, and to have that be a noble act, risking the fate of the entire planet to save Bucky in 1949, or prevent Howard’s death in the 90s, is antithetical to the person Steve has become.
I mean, the very conundrum of time travel is that you can not foresee what repercussions your actions have. Doing as little to impact the timeline, is the only way you can travel to the past, and be seen as a good person. He may do some short term good, but his lack of knowledge of other events and how they will be impacted, means that what plays out will never be as simple as “Steve prevented the rise of Hydra within SHIELD”. I mean, okay that’s nice. Where does Hydra go though? They don’t just quit because they failed to infiltrate SHIELD. We know they were infiltrating other Allied nations, as Bucky was kept in Russia. So instead of infiltrating both Russia and the US, and manipulate the Cold War tensions to their own advantage, instead they are only able to infiltrate Russia, and since they can’t play both sides against each other, we don’t actually have a Cold War, just a a real quick Hot War that kills half of all life on Earth, destroys every major city, and leaves Hydra ascendant worldwide.
But hey, Steve stopped Zola and saved Bucky, so YAY????
In my ramble about Civil War in the Endgame preparation thread, I mentioned how if Steve has any lesson to learn, it’s how sometimes, the best thing to do is not act.
If Steve had allowed a conventional military attack against Crossbones, things in Civil War would have played out differently. There would have been no precipitating event that targeted Wanda’s actions specifically, for one thing. The Wakandans wouldn’t have died, meaning they wouldn’t have gotten drawn into public view, T’Challa wouldn’t be king now.
But Steve couldn’t let that happen, couldn’t allow someone else to be the one to take down Crossbones, because his vendetta against Rumlow was personal, because Rumlow represented the last vestige of his life long enemy, Hydra. Steve had to act, and it turned out terribly. By Endgame, he’s learned, sometimes just because you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean, you should do something.
I mean, I really really hate this whole idea that Steve will meddle in the past, it represents an absolute regression of the person Steve became who was finally ready to stop fighting.
It turned out great, they stopped an enhanced terrorist getting his hands on WMDs. Something that a conventional military response might have struggled with. Yes there were casualties, but even collateral damage was minor. It was only because Ross, Zemo, and Tony were dedicating their lives to actively fucking things up (albeit all for different personal reasons) that things spiralled out of control in the aftermath.
It turned out great,
Except it was the precipitating act that split the Avengers in the question of “What Do We Do With A Problem Like Wanda”, yeah, otherwise great.
Something that a conventional military response might have struggled with.
The entire reason the Wakandans got blown up, thus bringing them to Venice for T’Chaka to get blown up, was that the Avengers force didn’t have enough manpower to prevent the terrorists from fleeing the scene with the WMD, something that would not have happened with a conventional military force, which would have first posted a strong perimeter, because they would have brought sufficient manpower.
Yes there were casualties, but even collateral damage was minor.
And with a conventional military force, they never would have made it to a secondary location, where they caused the explosion with civilian casualties
I read the writers’ comments about why they killed Natasha. It was horrible. They claimed that it would have been too sad if they killed someone with a family so they killed off Natasha.
The writer of this article isn’t looking for issues, they are already there in plain sight. It’s clear that the writers of end game hate women. The message is clear that single women, who aren’t in relationships, don’t have kids, are dispensable. Women should always bow to men’s needs. Captain marvel who was hyped as the savior was tossed like a Pebble so that iron Man could win.
The writers of the movie go on saying she wouldn’t get a funeral because iron Man was more popular and a public figure. That’s right. Even though they showed they majority of people who were friends with Natasha at Tony’s funeral. She wouldn’t get one. Despite the funeral being basically private.
Women are upset because the writers are trying to justify their piss poor actions against women.
There’s even a freaking plot hole they could have dug themselves out! A soul for a soul. Natasha could have come back when the soul some was returned.
“Women should get to work the center stage of these narratives, and more importantly, they should not bear the brunt of men’s choices and give up their own freedoms and stories in their favor.” — This is why my heart sinks at reports of the Eternals movie “centering around the romance between Ikaris and Sersi,” which didn’t exist in the comics, especially since Sersi was superlatively independent and Ikaris the most boring of leading-male template characters. Kirby himself made another space-goddess, Thena, the star of the sole Eternals annual in the day, and this could be the MCU’s chance to have an ensemble film be female-led from the start.
Even though they showed they majority of people who were friends with Natasha at Tony’s funeral.
The ones who no longer existed at the time she died.
Look I don’t care what the Russos were trying to do with the character, or what they were thinking. ‘
I know Tasha. Tasha isn’t going to let anyone else sacrifice themselves for her, especially not her best friend who gave her that chance at love, life and family she never thought she’d have.
And Tasha doesn’t fail.
@Aeryl:
But its not the past. That’s the whole point. This is a new, different timeline. And I completely disagree that the man who said “I’m sorry, Tony. If I see a situation pointed south, I can’t ignore it. Sometimes I wish I could” needs to somehow unlearn this philosophy. That kind of thing is fundamental to someone’s upbringing and character. He would be completely miserable in this new life of his doing nothing.
And of course I’ve read plenty of stories about foreknowledge being dangerous, or closed loop stories (which this, again, isn’t) where it was the foreknowledge that caused the problems in the first place. I’ve also read plenty of after action reports were certified intelligence (knowing something was going to happen before it did) saved countless lives. Crime stings rely on knowing what is going to happen ahead of time. One of those things is far more realistic than the other. Actual foreknowledge, in the hands of Steve Rogers, is a good thing.
@65:
This presupposes that a conventional military force (in force, as opposed to a small special ops team) could have responded to the situation fast enough. We don’t know how, or when, the Avengers got their intel.
@@@@@#3: 3,000 Internet Points!
You said all I wanted to, and much more succinctly than I would have!
I think this critique is only valid if you ignore the previous 20 films that came before Infinity War/Endgame.
Complaining that we didn’t get to see enough of Peggy is weird, considering she’s been in all 3 Captain America films as well as Age of Ultron and Ant-Man… not to mention 2 seasons of her own TV series, as well as a Marvel One-Shot. No MCU character has gotten as much exposure, not even Tony Stark, and she’s been fierce and fearless since the beginning. Peggy Carter is instrumental and foundational to this universe and she was justly rewarded for her awesomeness.
While it’s true women have only headlined two Marvel movies, Captain Marvel and Ant-Man and the Wasp, claiming they aren’t significant players in every single is simply to ignore the entirety of the MCU.
So, I found the whole Gamora death in Infinity Wars unsatisfying, so my headcanon is that the Soul Stone recovery mechanism is to have a single person stand at top of the mountain and then ZOOM, they get whisked to the pool with the stone. Red Skull, who is trapped in a boring ghost existence, entertains himself by telling people the story about having to kill someone you love when they traipse up to the top of Soul Mountain. Probably if three people hike up together he tells them the stone wants two souls.
This seems to be entirely consistent with what we’ve seen, right? I do find Natasha’s death meaningful, because she’s spent the past five years trying to keep her family together after it goes blown apart. Clint has spent the past five years trying to kill himself. And he’s never been able to take her on — she’s more ruthless. Her sacrifice echoes Steve’s in his first movie. The big problem is that she’s the only female in the first Avenger’s group, so we need more stories. As it is, all the women in the original group die.
I didn’t find Valkyrie’s story bad either. She’s been the leader of Asgard for years. I don’t know how long it took the refugees to reach Earth, but she was presumably the leader for that journey. Thor making it official was only fair; I’m not sure why we think that was him forcing her into stuff. Hereditary inheritance is crazy anyway; why was it his job at all?
I do think the Marvel Universe tends to be more interested in its men than its women, which is why the ratio is so skewed. I just wish the stories of the women had more depth. It’s fine that Pepper is left to raise Morgan, but it would have been cool to see her learning to use her suit and reconciling the need for superheroes with her worries about her family’s safety. It would have been great if Steve had asked Peggy for help at SHIELD (“I’m from the future and I need the stones” and they had done something. If Carol had known stuff about timey-wimey-stuff and help with the mission design. My issues with the women of Marvel is the thinness of the stories, not the specifics.
The only true sign of “girl power” in the movie came from Wanda Maximoff aka the Scarlet Witch, who came close to truly killing Thanos . . . more so than anyone else. Unlike his fight against Captains America and Marvel, Thanos had to cry for help in order to distract Wanda from killing him.
I definitely agree on a lot of points. Especially Pepper and Morgan! We’ve sadly never gotten enough of Pepper’s perspective on things, especially since the IM trilogy ended. I’ve always disliked that they essentially wrote her out in aou/cacw despite the fact that she runs Earth’s biggest tech company and should have connections to other characters (her budding friendship with Nat in im2, Maria Hill calling her in Agents of Shield, her friendship with Phil Coulson, etc). Her role in their universe has always been undervalued. I’m still frustrated that in IM3 they cut a sequence explaining what she was doing as CEO (environmental stuff & finding a cure for AIDS), in cacw they decided to go with her and Tony being on a break to fuel his angst (thank god they didn’t fridge her), and then while I loved her showing up as Rescue in Endgame, I would have absolutely loved to see more scenes with her. They didn’t even give us a scene with Tony, Pepper, and Morgan which makes it feel even more grating. Marvel has forgotten about a lot of the rich character building which made them so successful in the first place. The whole reason I loved Iron Man so much was because of the depth and nuance in Tony, Pepper, and their relationship.
When I watched Natasha’s sacrifice, I mostly felt the same (although I have heard some pretty good explanations of the character by Aeryl and others). It wasn’t that it didn’t make sense in story – I didn’t necessarily want Clint to die either, especially as his whole motivation was to get back to his family – and it totally makes sense to me that Natasha would see it the same way, not because she views herself as disposable (and fwiw, I never once interpreted the narrative in AoU laying out that she was a monster *because* she was infertile, but rather that was another one of the ways the Red Room people dehumanized and used her so they could craft her into their own weapon with their own purpose) but because it was her friend and she wanted to balance the ledger. That said, the meta/optics of the situation weren’t great, and the fact that the story had to go that way in the first place is irritating (I was kind of hoping her soul would then bring Gamora back, and I also like your idea of the subversion where her willing sacrifice negates the need for it).
I actually did like the girl power scene even if it was a bit on the nose, simply because it was great to see such a wide array of characters. It galls me when people say it’s ‘contrived’ because…is it any more contrived than a bunch of male characters standing together/coming together for a battle pose?
I do agree more time could have been spent on the Gamora/Nebula dynamic but I also disagree she’s merely a ‘quest object’ at this point. She’ll hopefully get more exploration later on; but of course Quill is going to be concerned about where she is because to him, she’s a person that he loves. How else would he and the other Guardians be expected to react? I do agree it was clumsily handled though and we really don’t get enough of her motivation here.
As for the rest, a lot of it seems a little purposefully spun. I disagree heartily about Valkryrie, for example (some of the previous commenters have gone into good detail on this already). And as for Tony, I find it odd that on one point you’re arguing that Clint should have been the one to die, but on the other you’re arguing that Iron Man choosing to die is placing an unfair burden on his family and just reduces Pepper/Morgan as characters who have to deal with his choices. In some ways, that’s what life is – we deal with other people’s choices.
I think what the real gist of this is though is that since in general Marvel’s focus on its female characters’ arcs has been shallow and less focused than the mens’, it’s kind of easy to view it this way, which I do think is a legitamate complaint, as most of the narrative does still mostly focus on the main male characters and as Endgame is basically wrapping up the main Avengers/Iron Man story line, it’s still mostly around those characters. But at the same time, we have about a dozen different female stories (even if they only get secondary focus) and that’s at least some progress.