Avengers: Endgame SPOILER Topic (Enter at your own risk)

[DaveLong]

Yeah, I’m not sure how much I like Cap’s choice but I’m going to assume that it is a setup for his return at some point in the future. I doubt that, but you just never know. That kiss at the end brought me to tears though. Hayley Atwell is so beautiful and Peggy Carter is so incredible. I’ll deal with it being a bit of a rule breaker.

I adored many scenes in the film. Cap weilding the hammer. Spider-Man’s return. Gamora kneeing Star-Lord in the crotch. Brainy Hulk. Fat Thor… it’s loaded with fantastic elements and yeah, Loki will be back. Guaranteed.

[cornchip]

Fun movie. I fell asleep for a few minutes when Hawkeye(?) was fighting an Asian man? That might not even be right. When I woke up, the team was getting ready to go back in time and Hawkeye was with them. What’d I miss? This isn’t a knock on the movie; I just barely got to sleep last night but I wasn’t going to waste my ticket.

[DaveLong]

Natasha forgave him. They went back to the compound. You didn’t miss anything.

[aeneas]

An interesting take on Steve’s final decision.

Captain America's Ending Ruins Avengers: Endgame

[WhollySchmidt]

@aeneas

Sam’s callback to Winter Soldier with the ‘on the left’ line pleased me greatly. As did Steve finally getting to say Avengers Assemble.

“On your left” was a high point for me too.

@Harkonis

I really liked it for the most part, but Cap being there at the end felt weird to me since they pretty much explained that with their rules that can’t happen that way.

I felt like that scene had a couple logical ways to play out, and they opted to cheat to hit the story beat of passing on the shield to Sam.

As Cap is getting onto the platform, they’ve just explained how he’ll only be gone for about 5 seconds, and Cap and Sam exchange “good luck” or whatever, and there’s a slightly more meaningful exchange with Bucky (including the “you’re taking all the stupid with you” callback) that ends with Bucky saying he’ll miss Cap.

So what I was expecting to happen was Cap to jump into the past, we count down five seconds, Sam and Hulk freak out that he’s not back, and Bucky is all knowingly like “he’s not coming back, he’s where he’s supposed to be” or something.

That would’ve been great.

Also great would’ve been Cap reappears as expected, but he’s an old man. That would’ve still worked with the movie’s time travel logic, but been a little clunkier.

So yes, I think the implication of the scene if you think it through as it was shown on screen is that time travel worked differently here, and Cap really did jump back to “our” past, not a different branch of the timeline created by his jump. And that definitely breaks the rules as established in the movie. So it’s a cheat.

I’ll allow it.

Also, based on the time travel as it’s explained when they’re not cheating, they didn’t give Loki an out. The Loki that grabbed the Tesseract and vanished was also in another branch of the timeline. He might be off making mischief in that timeline, but not ours.

Anyway, I loved this. I got some predictions half right, a lot wrong, but I did randomly pick Natasha as a likely death in a “dead pool” with some friends. So there’s that.

[WhollySchmidt]

@WhollySchmidt

Continuing to bend all new details into my own pet theory about the quantum realm and alternate universes, maybe those new outfits are for using B.A.R.F. tech to project whatever appearance they need to fit in with other worlds/past versions of themselves.

It’s going to be fun to look back and laugh at all my theories in a couple months.

Wrong!

@WhollySchmidt

@WhollySchmidt

Continuing to bend all new details into my own pet theory about the quantum realm and alternate universes, maybe those new outfits are for using B.A.R.F. tech to project whatever appearance they need to fit in with other worlds/past versions of themselves.

It’s going to be fun to look back and laugh at all my theories in a couple months.

Even crazier conspiracy theory: those new costumes aren’t in the movie, they’re placeholders in the trailers to cover up team members wearing old versions for timeline/multiverse hopping.

The bottom line is I will drive myself insane speculating if April doesn’t get here soon.

Wrong!

@WhollySchmidt

I don’t think that specific shot really hints at that, though obviously almost everyone has some kind of theory about how time travel will or won’t be a factor.

Maybe when the gang first reunites, Cap grabs that uniform out of his locker in the Avengers compound since it’s the first time he’s been back there since Civil War, and the more recent Avengers uniform he’s been wearing since he left is obviously all beat to hell. But who knows?

Plus, there was no infinity stone in Winter Soldier, so there isn’t an obvious reason he’d need to wear that S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform again for time travel shenanigans.

I’ve lost track of exactly what we know and what’s speculation—I’ve heard the movie starts with a time jump to some time after the snap, but from trailers it looks like at least some scenes will be picking up almost immediately after. My best guess from today’s footage is that in the immediate aftermath of the snap, the very first thing they do is somehow get Tony and Nebula to Earth with the gang, and from there, plan A is they just go right back out and try to fight Thanos again. Maybe act one is them thinking that even though they’re missing so many people, it’s worth a shot to try another united, direct assault. Maybe that’s the confrontation with Thanos we see here. I could even imagine the movie starting with them actually beating/killing Thanos, before realizing the gauntlet is spent and taking him out accomplished nothing.

@WhollySchmidt

I bet Carol does kick his ass, or at least is a big help. They just don’t realize the gauntlet is already busted and nothing they can do to Thanos will fix that.

(And then Nebula will finish him off anyway.)

Sorta right!

[garin]

@WhollySchmidt

So yes, I think the implication of the scene if you think it through as it was shown on screen is that time travel worked differently here, and Cap really did jump back to “our” past, not a different branch of the timeline created by his jump. And that definitely breaks the rules as established in the movie. So it’s a cheat.

I understand why people would think that, but I don’t think it’s what happened. If Old Steve had been sitting on the bench the whole time I think they would have noticed him earlier.

My own headcanon on this is that he did return to the present shortly after he left, just not exactly where they expected. He’d procured more Pym particles at some point during his life and used those to return, removing the need for the quantum tunnel platform.

[WhollySchmidt]

@garin

@WhollySchmidt

So yes, I think the implication of the scene if you think it through as it was shown on screen is that time travel worked differently here, and Cap really did jump back to “our” past, not a different branch of the timeline created by his jump. And that definitely breaks the rules as established in the movie. So it’s a cheat.

I understand why people would think that, but I don’t think it’s what happened. If Old Steve had been sitting on the bench the whole time I think they would have noticed him earlier.

My own headcanon on this is that he did return to the present shortly after he left, just not exactly where they expected. He’d procured more Pym particles at some point during his life and used those to return, removing the need for the quantum tunnel platform.

That was my first thought right after seeing the movie, but then it’s still kinda stretching how time travel worked before. They all came back to the platform they left from in every other instance. But maybe that’s the nicer cheat, I don’t know.

[WhollySchmidt]

Apologies, I know this is indulgent, but I spent a year thinking and posting about Endgame, so I also went back through all my posts in the Infinity War spoiler thread where I theorized on Endgame.

@WhollySchmidt

@DaveLong

I can’t think of any film in history that killed off so much of its heroic cast. I honestly felt like none of the deaths were very cheap because frankly, Thanos is one of the greatesr movie villains of all time now. His motivation is clear and believeable. His conviction is unwavering. Josh Brolin was excellent in the role.

The fight on Titan was fantastic. Comic books on screen and more. Thor was a huge highlight for me, too. Man… what a movie.

The meta just ruins the impact of those deaths though. This movie didn’t happen in a vacuum. There’s a Spider-Man movie coming out next year. There’s another Guardian’s of the Galaxy. We know the final “snap” gets undone in some way.

And unfortunately that risks undermining the other big deaths earlier in the movie, which I’m not sure will be undone. I guess we’ll know in a year.

Most obvious prediction for AV4: the survivors go multi-verse hopping to find another Infinity Gauntlet.

I was convinced there was going to be a distinction between accessing multiple dimensions/alternate realities, and time travel, and that Endgame wouldn’t actually be about time travel. It turns out it was totally time travel, but sort of time travel that plays by the rules of alternate realities.

So I was wrong about the mechanics, and dedicated to being wrong (I made that multiverse claim a lot), but I had the gist of what they were actually doing right over a year ago. Not that I was unique in guessing they would try to remake the Infinity Gauntlet, but it’s still kinda fun to guess right-ish.

@WhollySchmidt

More Avengers 4 guessing here. Partially based now on the info from those leaked production photos being discussed, so spoilerizing that part:

I suggested earlier that the plan in A4 could be to go multiverse-hopping looking for the stones to power another infinity gauntlet to bring back to our universe and fix what Thanos did.

It’s been teased before that Pym particles and Ant-Man are the keys to the multiverse, so it sure seems logical that’s what’s going on. Specific to the scene being discussed in New York, I bet those are our Avengers crashing the Battle of New York in another reality with the intent to take the gem from Loki’s staff when they’re finished.

I know the Dr. Strange stuff in Infinity War could strongly be hinting at time manipulation being the key to fixing things, but I’m still leaning toward alternate universes being the answer, not time travel. I think the time gem was just important in letting Dr. Strange set things on that course.

And that’s at least partially due to my hope that somehow, somewhere, we still get basically a “what-if montage”, glimpses of different realities where they can provide a whole bunch of fan service without actually turning it into multi-year commitments. Like, as much as I love both Bucky as Cap and Falcon as Cap, even if their contracts are a lot longer than Chris Evans’ contract, I sort of can’t imagine either of those two wanting to stick around long enough to do those arcs justice. But if we’ve got realities to hop through, we could just have some quick scenes in a world where Bucky is leading the Avengers, or even—dare I dream—Luke Cage is leading the New Avengers? The multiverse angle lets you throw in the fan service they’ve made clear is impossible otherwise, it’s the only way I think we’ll ever see anyone from the television side of the universe on the big screen. Daisy could be running S.H.I.E.L.D.! Hawkeye could be married to Mockingbird! Time travel doesn’t open up those possibilities the way the multiverse does.

But that’s all still a long shot, I know. Just dreaming out loud.

Also, I don’t think Captain Marvel will be the lynchpin of AV4. I think the stinger in Infinity War was just in the vein of all stingers past, it’s a quick nod to what’s coming next. I expect Captain Marvel will be in AV4, certainly, but I don’t think the whole thing will come down to her involvement.

Like I said, I really doubled down on how it wasn’t going to be time travel, it was going to be multiverses. I was at least right that it wasn’t all about the Time Stone.

And of course my crazy fan service multiverse dreams didn’t play out, although technically we did get a cameo of what I think is the only time a character who was first portrayed on a a Marvel TV show made it back onto the big screen–James D’Arcy as Jarvis.

@Andy_Bates

@WhollySchmidt

I expect Captain Marvel will be in AV4, certainly, but I don’t think the whole thing will come down to her involvement.

From the very first appearance of Thanos in the comics, Captain Marvel was one of his main opponents. I’d be surprised if she wasn’t a significant part of the next Avengers movie.

I love the balance they struck here. Carol had a couple huge moments apart from her fight with Thanos, and I think it’s clearer now that she is the strongest of the Avengers, but it still didn’t come down to her beating Thanos single-handedly. She got close. There were several times in this movie and in Infinity War that characters got close to beating Thanos, and I like that it was both believable that any one of those encounters could’ve gone slightly differently and Thanos could’ve lost, but that even while believing other characters might’ve beaten him if not for chance, Carol still clearly had the easiest time with him and got closest.

@WhollySchmidt

I wonder if A4 will specifically address the decisions made about trading lives.

Cap is very vocal about it, insisting that they not sacrifice Vision to destroy the mind stone. But all four stones that the heroes have anything to do with end up involving this moral dilemma.

Gamora eventually gives up the location of the Soul Stone to save Nebula (and StarLord couldn’t kill her earlier on his own to prevent that from happening either).

Dr. Strange eventually gives up the time stone to save Stark.

Loki gives up the space stone to save Thor.

On the surface, it certainly looks like sacrificing a life would’ve been the right call in every one of those situations. Of course without perfect knowledge of the future, none of that is certain (and Dr. Strange might know what he’s doing), but I wonder if this will be further explored, or if what we saw in Infinity War is about as deep as they’ll go on that.

Narrator: “They didn’t.”

[WhollySchmidt]

Also.

They gave Captain Marvel her comic haircut and the sash! I was way more excited about that than I should’ve been.

[John_Reynolds]

Had a hard time keeping the eyes dry for Tony’s final scenes, especially with a young couple to my right both bawling like babies. And then the romantic in me got to see Steve and Peggy and while I was sad to see Cap go I couldn’t imagine a better ending for him. I refused to mull over the time travel rules and just accepted it.

[garin]

@WhollySchmidt

That was my first thought right after seeing the movie, but then it’s still kinda stretching how time travel worked before. They all came back to the platform they left from in every other instance. But maybe that’s the nicer cheat, I don’t know.

But that’s because their supply of Pym particles is limited, and using the quantum tunnel where possible makes those trips effectively ‘free’, right?

If you’re willing to burn extra particles you don’t need the platform, as seen when Tony and Cap travel directly from 2012 to 1970. You just need a way to get small enough, whether that’s Pym particles or a quantum tunnel.

[WhollySchmidt]

Ah, you might have the answer there! But it’s late and I can’t think anymore now.

[Baconsoda]

Just like the GameSpot article, I really can’t grasp everything after Steve’s retirement. So are there multiple timelines now in which Vision will or won’t exist? Or changing the fate of all MCU characters after he reunited with Peggy? I’m thoroughly confused now.

I’m too dumb to understand quantum physics and still think Back to the Future could really work one day.

[DarthMasta]

I’d say the movie implies that Cap time travelled the old fashioned way, one day at at time, same as the rest of us, being careful not to change anything and living a life with Peggy.

But, it can also be that he went back to WWII, made sure Hydra was dead, was Tony’s godfather, barfed a little when his niece was born, etc, etc, and after a long life used some Pym particles and the suit to time travel to his old reality to give Sam his shield.

I’d say either interpretation can be right. And if I’m right that they’re going to use the escaping Loki as a way to bring him back to the main MCU, the door will be open for a version of Chris Evans Cap to do the same…

[Nesrie]

That was a satisfying journey, the movie and the entire campaign if you will. It’s a remarkable accomplishment for Marvel an Disney, and there is no short-cutting that kind of build-up. I enjoyed it and will be seeing that again.

Having said that…

I see the time travel thing a lot in the various ares of my favorites stories, and I rarely like it. They monkeyed with a lot of stuff here, after spending a lot of time talking about what not to do. It just… eeeh, but hey the pay-off in the end was huge. There was also way less death than I was expecting too, so there were tears aplenty for the two deaths, but I am just amazed there weren’t more final final send-offs.

Good stuff.

oh yeah, I think Thanos let his insanity slip show a little more this time too.

[DarthMasta]

Thanos is harder than the spaceship, obviously. :D

[WhollySchmidt]

My sister to my girlfriend as the credits rolled:

“But what’s going to happen with all those people just reappearing? Won’t that cause a Jane/Michael situation!?”

I have seen half of one episode of Jane the Virgin, exactly enough to just barely appreciate her point. There are going to be some awkward reunions.

[divedivedive]

@krayzkrok

Scott was standing by the window and got blasted into oblivion

Aw no, did they kill Ant-Man? He’s my favorite! Well, him and Rocket - I wish they’d make a buddy movie with those two, just getting into hijinks, you know what I mean?

[ArmandoPenblade]

Alas, unfortunately, Paul Rudd survived again.