And with a snap of his fingers, Iron Man ended the journey he began back in 2008.
Across 11 years, three phases and 22 films, fans followed the adventures of Tony Stark and his band of superhero colleagues-slash-friends in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) arc known as the Infinity Saga. Although Spider-Man: Far From Home is technically considered the last film to close out the third phase, Avengers: Endgame marks a definitive end for several key characters, and to their rational world as we’ve come to know it. The Marvel Studios head, Kevin Feige, did exactly what he said he’d do: he gave us a finale.
From the credits of Endgame, we know any future Avengers film will look pretty different from what we’re used to. To recap what happened: using Ant-Man’s quantum tunnel and Iron Man’s GPS system, the Avengers devise a plan to hop back at different points in time, steal the infinity stones, and create their own gauntlet to bring everyone back to life. However, almost all their plans go sideways, and in the end some sacrifices must be made. Tony does wield all six Infinity Stones and turns Thanos and his entire army to dust, but the act kills him. Black Widow dies in exchange for the soul stone. In the aftermath of Thanos’s defeat, Thor joins the Guardians of the Galaxy and leaves Valkyrie as leader of New Asgard. Captain America is tasked with returning the stones exactly to the moments they were taken, yet he never returns on the time platform; instead he reappears offscreen as an old man, and we learn he lived out his life with his love, Peggy Carter. Hulk and Hawkeye are still around, though drastically changed as people. It didn’t quite deliver the definitive deaths we were expecting, yet for most of them, we know this is probably goodbye.
With that in mind, we have a vague idea of what the next batch of films will look like in phase four. Black Panther, Doctor Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy all have sequels confirmed, but no set release dates. Jac Schaeffer is writing a Black Widow film, but it’s been rumored to be a prequel. Considering the tragic events of Endgame, there’s some hope that that description is a little misleading, and the movie will give us some clarity on whether Steve was able to bring Natasha back when he returned the soul stone.
Chloé Zhao is directing the Angelina Jolie-led The Eternals – about a race of human-looking near immortals created by the Celestials (like Peter Quill’s father) – and Destin Daniel Cretton is directing a Shang-Chi film, the first Asian actor-led film in the MCU. Sony’s Amy Pascal is producing a live-action Silk movie about Cindy Moon, a Korean-American classmate who gets bitten by a radioactive spider alongside Peter Parker. Since Spider-Man: Homecoming actually introduced a background character named Cindy, played by Tiffany Espensen. It’s not yet clear if she’s meant to appear in the MCU as Tom Holland does, or is going to be a standalone like Venom. Miles Morales’s uncle, Aaron Davis (played by Donald Glover), was also introduced in Homecoming. Feige has confirmed a Ms Marvel film is in the works, centering around Kamala Khan, Marvel’s first teen Muslim superheroine. And then there’s the newly re-acquired X-Men and Fantastic Four, but Feige has said it will be “a very long time” before they show up.
Marvel is keeping mum about the schedule, and is probably waiting until San Diego Comic-Con or the D23 Expo in the summertime to reveal solid dates. A more intriguing question, though, has to do with Disney’s own streaming platform and how Endgame’s convoluted time hopping plays into its planned spin-off shows.
When it comes to time travel in Endgame, the directors kept it vague about what the full repercussions were. We only know how it doesn’t work: as Bruce says, unlike Back to the Future, altering the past cannot change the future. That’s why killing 2014 Nebula doesn’t cause 2023 Nebula to immediately disappear, and why War Machine’s suggestion to kill baby Thanos simply wouldn’t work. It’s also why their only option is to steal the stones and use them in the present, rather than try to stop a past Thanos from snapping his fingers. Think of the Avengers as railroad attendants, and each action they take while in the past like the flipping of a train track. While all the Avengers are able to hop back and forth in a linear fashion, every change they make just creates a new reality that branches off theirs. We’re not told how big or small the alterations have to be to trigger this; according to the butterfly effect, the very act of them appearing backwards in time could ripple out in enormously damaging ways, creating an endless multiverse where anything could happen.
Bruce and the Ancient One seem to agree that returning the stones from the very moment they were taken after Thanos is defeated will simply erase all these divergent realities. But are they sure? Considering Bruce turned Ant-Man into a baby and the Ancient One didn’t foresee Doctor Strange giving up the time stone to Thanos, perhaps neither of them are actually all that versed in the intricacies of time travel and alternate universes.
The fact that returning the stones doesn’t actually collapse out all the alternate realities would explain several of the upcoming Disney+ shows. It sounds like only two of the shows take place within the current timeline: Hawkeye features Clint passing on the mantle to a young Kate Bishop, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is probably going to be about Sam eventually accepting that he’s now Captain America (which is keeping in line with a recent comics run). Others, like the Loki and WandaVision shows, hint that Steve didn’t quite succeed in closing out all other universes. Loki from 2012 got a hold of the Tesseract, something that was glossed over in Endgame but will probably be the lead-in for him to wreak havoc on his own show. Vision was never revived in Endgame, and yet his show involves him and Wanda living out in the 1950s; we can only guess how in the world that would work, but it does sound like time and/or universe hopping would be involved.
There are also the divergent timelines created when Thor talks to his mother and Iron Man to his father, and then the major one is when Steve decides to stay with Peggy. (Steve from 2023 even speaking to past Peggy would immediately create an alternate reality, by the way, which means when he reappears on that bench, he probably traveled dimensions, not time. My guess is that alternate universe’s Doctor Strange zapped him there.) We have no idea what could happen in each of those timelines. Is it possible there’s a world where Frigga never dies? Or one where Howard Stark becomes more altruistic, and thus Tony never becomes a war profiteer? Does the Steve who lives with Peggy ever intervene with Hydra, or rescue Bucky before he’s tortured (thus, again, changing the course of Tony’s life, if Bucky never kills his parents)? And let’s not forget that there’s now a 2014 where Thanos, Gamora and Nebula no longer exist.
The fact of the matter is there are endless possibilities, and the door is wide open, really, to introduce any number of new and interesting characters – such as Amadeus Cho, Jennifer Walters, Goddess Thor or Riri Williams – and just attribute it to the creation of a multiverse. Characters like Doctor Strange and Ant-Man, and animated films like Into the Spider-Verse, even tell us it’s not impossible for characters from alternate dimensions to suddenly come crashing into our present one. It’s possible Disney+’s What If series will explore exactly all these intriguing permutations.
While it’s sad we now must say goodbye to several characters we’ve grown to love and root for over the years, we shouldn’t see Endgame as simply the end. Instead, think of it as a great, wild beginning.
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