- Warning: There are major spoilers ahead for "Avengers: Endgame." Do not read this post if you haven't seen the movie.
- Most of "Endgame" has to deal with the Avengers trying to figure out how to bring back those they lost at the end of "Infinity War."
- The Avengers decide to gather the Infinity Stones before Thanos can ever get a hold of them. They go back to different moments from other movies to retrieve them.
- Some of the moments they choose seem really inconvenient. There were better moments in time they could have traveled to in order to retrieve the stones.
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My largest quibble with "Avengers: Endgame" has nothing to do with how time travel works in the three-hour movie or making sense of Nebula's consciousness syncing up with herself from another timeline.
I'm not even bothered by the potential conundrum of Captain America going back to the past to live out his days with Peggy Carter while possibly wiping her former family from existence. (Unless, of course, this was Cap's destiny all along!)
No, I can't stop thinking about how the Avengers should've chosen different moments in time to travel back to in order to retrieve the six Infinity Stones.
They had some of the smartest people in the galaxy gathered together (Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, and Rocket Raccoon) and all of the time in the world to come up with the perfect plan of where and when to travel back in time. They had characters there who knew where all six stones had been at some point across the previous 21 Marvel movies. Some of the characters interacted with multiple stones across multiple movies.
Instead, the Avengers picked some truly mind-boggling moments to revisit where the stones weren't easily accessible.
It seems like they could have made it a bit easier on themselves. There were specific moments in the 21 MCU movies where someone held a stone in peace for a year or numerous years at a time.
When the Avengers should have traveled back in time to get each stone
Aside from the soul stone on Vormir (there's really no avoiding the repercussions of that one) and the Time Stone (Bruce has a pretty simple time acquiring that), here's when the Avengers could've gone back in time to get the other stones.
Power Stone (purple): Nebula and War Machine should've went back to the events at the end of "The Guardians of the Galaxy." Rocket Raccoon was there when Quill left the stone with the Nova Corps for protection. I genuinely thought he survived the snap to tell the group that intel. We also wouldn't have had to deal with Gamora from 2014 not knowing anyone.
Aether/Reality Stone (red): Thor could've visited the Collector after the events of "Thor: The Dark World" when he told Sif to leave the stone with Benicio del Toro's character.
Tesseract/Space Stone (blue): There are a few other times the Avengers could have gotten the Tesseract that probably would've been easier. One of the most logical times would've been going to Asgard during "Thor: Ragnarok" when the stone was just chilling in Odin's vault. Loki steals it from the planet before it's destroyed.
The team also could've visited any other moment when S.H.I.E.L.D. has the stone safely in its possession before Loki comes to take it in 2012's "The Avengers." If Captain Marvel was around, she could've just gone back to the events of her movie to get it from Nick Fury when she leaves the stone with him. It's convenient she's off saving other planets and isn't consulted after the time jump.
Mind Stone (yellow): Instead of returning to the events of the Battle of New York, Cap could've returned a little earlier in "The Avengers." The team has possession of the scepter in "Avengers" for awhile on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Helicarrier after Loki is imprisoned on board. Stark later uses the stone in "Age of Ultron" to create Vision. They could've went back and just nabbed it before putting it in Vision's head.
Soul Stone (orange): The Avengers got this one right. I don't think there's any great moments to go to Vormir to acquire this stone. They probably could've gone to any year other than when Thanos was there during "Infinity War" to retrieve it.
Time Stone (green): No one really knew Doctor Strange before the events of "Infinity War" and Strange's sidekick Wong certainly wasn't around to help as I thought he'd be after Marvel released a full-color poster of him ahead of the movie.
The problem with the times they selected and traveled to: Good luck returning some of those stones!
The Ancient One told Bruce Banner they needed to return each stone to precisely the same moment they retrieved it from after they set their timeline intact. Yes, they didn't know this before they commenced their time travel expedition. But shouldn't the genius, billionaire, no-longer playboy, philanthropist Tony Stark know that if he figured out the physics of time travel?
It was tough enough for some of those characters to retrieve their stones. I'm a bit confused about how Captain America returns a few of them to the exact same moments in the past. As mentioned above, how does Cap take the Reality Stone and insert it back into Jane? How do you return the Soul Stone to the Red Skull on Vormir? And Cap won't hurt his hand by putting the Power Stone back in the temple on Morag.
The most difficult stones to return should be the Tesseract and Mind Stone. Cap wasn't even with Tony when he acquired the Tesseract in the basement of the S.H.I.E.L.D./government building in 1970. And it's not like Tony is around to tell him where it goes. Cap had to fight off himself to get the Mind Stone. Does that mean Cap will be in the same room with his two former selves? Weird. And it's weirder because at that point in time the Captain America who went back in time to retrieve the Mind Stone isn't aware he'll need to also return the stone to the same moment of time.
The other problem that seemed like it could've been easily solved: The limited supply of Pym Particles
Ant-Man made a big deal over and over again about how they had a limited supply of Pym Particles. That seemed like a simple enough problem to fix when you have a time machine. Couldn't they go back a few years and get a supply from Pym to bring back to the future? Then they would've had unlimited times (or several more shots) to go back in the past. Tony and Cap do that later in the movie, as if they just realized they could do that.
What's not made clear is whether or not they're trying to avoid confrontation with their past selves at all costs. If so, (and that's what it seems), that would make going to some of these points a little trickier. However, Cap runs into himself and there wasn't a giant hole ripped in time and space.
Why all of this is frustrating
So much of "Endgame" is a love letter to its fans who have seen all 21 movies before it. There are countless callbacks, references, and Easter eggs for fans to find. So it's a bit insulting to fans' knowledge of the films to go back to certain moments in time to retrieve a stone when it's known there are easier moments in time for them to travel back to and do the same thing. It's like an amateur who only saw several MCU movies picked a few films out of a hat and then those were the ones the Avengers decided to travel back in time to as a challenge.
The only reason they traveled back to those moments were either to set up the future of the MCU ("The Avengers"), help push forward a narrative arc (Thor/Cap), or to close others (Tony seeing his dad). I'll explain.
By going back to "The Avengers," there's a moment where Tony messes up and Loki winds up with the Tesseract and uses it to simply disappear. That's not good. We have no idea where Loki goes. That's not what happens in the original timeline of events. However, Disney Plus is planning to release a show called "Loki." Since Loki is dead in 2023, maybe that will give us some answers.
By returning to "Thor: The Dark World," the God of Thunder is able to have one more moment with his mother. It's a much-needed one which helps set him on a course for what's next. By the movie's end, we see him relinquish what's left of the Asgardians to Valkyrie and Thor sets off on a new adventure with Rocket and the Guardians.
For Cap and Tony, going back to the 1970s was a convenient way for Steve Rogers to realize he wants to eventually go back in time to be with the love of his life, Peggy. He sees that she still thinks about him, too, by keeping a photo of Steve on her work desk. That gets to him. For Tony, he's finally able to say goodbye to his father, a moment which he admits has been haunting him in "Iron Man."
In defense of the Avengers: They didn't watch and rewatch every MCU movie over and over
Here's where I'll give Tony Stark and the Avengers a pass. Maybe they simply didn't know or remember each time they interacted with the stones. Before 2018's "Infinity War," most of them had no idea that Thanos was on a mission to collect all of them.
When the Avengers group together to try and recall where each stone was throughout history, they're in the year 2023. They were thinking back to 2012's "The Avengers." Unless you have a photographic memory, you most likely don't remember the precise year that every moment in your life occurred. Unlike the Avengers, fans have had the ability to rewatch these movies over and over again to know exactly when and where each stone was at various moments throughout history.
Or as I mentioned earlier, maybe they knew of the other moments in time and they tried to select events where they wanted to avoid running into their former selves. That holds up to some extent, but Cap wound up running into himself anyway in 2012.
Perhaps I'm being a little too critical of them. Or maybe the filmmakers knew exactly when they could've sent them back in time and realized, where's the fun in that? That would just make things too easy.
You can follow along with our "Avengers: Endgame" coverage here.
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