Avengers Endgame

For all the criticisms that the Marvel movies are about restoring the status quo (which is a lot like attacking firefighters for not working in construction; some people have the job of saving, others have the job of building), Avengers: Endgame has some real finality to it, especially where some of its biggest characters are concerned. Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) is really dead. Captain America (Chris Evans) is really an old man. These are permanent changes. There’s no way to go back without cheating the audience of these moments and diminishing the impact of Endgame. But these endings help breathe new life into the MCU by making what came before matter. What’s more, these conclusions feel like the natural end of these stories. When Tony Stark decided to become Iron Man, he wasn’t just deciding to fight against the weapons he created. He was remaking his entire life from careless playboy to someone who was putting his own life on the line to try and right a wrong. The story of Tony Stark throughout the MCU is someone who keeps making new mistakes as he tries to fix what’s been broken. As you see at the beginning of Endgame, Tony’s not even that remorseful about Ultron—he thinks a suit of armor around the world would at least have protected it from Thanos.

For all his brilliance, Tony Stark is a short-term thinker. “I created weapons? I’ll become a weapon to stop those weapons.” “I want to hang up the need for the Avengers? I’ll create an autonomous machine whose job is protect humanity.” “I feel responsible for the collateral damage I’ve caused? I’ll support accords that impose regulation on superheroes.” As Iron Man 3 points out, he’s a mechanic, and he’s constantly trying to fix things. And yet when it came time to a problem he couldn’t outthink, Tony Stark acted and wiped away Thanos and his legions at the cost of his own life. For Tony Stark, the nightmare he saw in Avengers: Age of Ultron wasn’t just that his friends were dead. It’s that he survived. That survivor’s guilt has long haunted Tony Stark—ever since the first Iron Man—and it was compounded when he got a glimpse of the other side of the portal in The Avengers. His sacrifice in Endgame provides a nice symmetry to the MCU, but more than that, it provides the proper close to his story. The guy who tries to control everything gives up his life and in his dying moments realizes that the world is in the safe hands of the people he loves and inspires. He did “build a suit of armor around the world”, but it wasn’t his machines; it was the people who followed his example. His legacy is people, from his fellow Avengers to his friends to his and Pepper’s daughter, Morgan.