Avengers: Endgame is a love letter of a blockbuster, paying tribute to the decade-plus of films
that came before it in inventive and exciting ways; a true three-ring circus of Marvel mania,
full of characters from every part of the MCU.
Here's a breakdown of the characters with more meaning than you may have realized.
Endgame sees the surprising return of the charismatic Frank Grillo as Brock Rumlow,
aka Crossbones.
He appears in a new scene meant to take place just moments after the conclusion of The Avengers'
Battle of New York, but before the whole team clocks out to go and get shawarma.
In his Endgame scene, Grillo is still a couple years away from exposing himself as a HYDRA
lackey, still sporting his pretty face before the events of The Winter Soldier left him
a burned-up, vengeful supervillain.
While he was talked up as a main antagonist of Civil War, his fate there was mostly to
be used as a hand grenade for Scarlet Witch.
While he never reached his full potential in the MCU, Crossbones is a recurring nemesis
for Captain America in Marvel Comics.
But in the movies, he was promptly leapfrogged and sidelined in favor of bigger and better
foes.
Due to a number of complicated, business-related reasons, Marvel Television and Marvel's movies
have never really been that closely-knit, despite technically existing under the same
umbrella of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
With a few exceptions, the two worlds have been kept very separate.
If you have any doubts about this, ask someone who's only watched the movies if they have
any idea what an Inhuman is supposed to be.
It's a situation that makes the appearance of Edwin Jarvis in Endgame all the more surprising.
Edwin is the butler of Howard Stark and the sidekick to Peggy Carter.
But unlike his co-lead, who was first introduced in the movies, he's never before made an appearance
in the movies of the MCU.
"Aren't you coming?"
"I thought I might sit this one out, actually."
While this is the character's first appearance in an MCU movie, he was an integral part of
the TV series Agent Carter.
Edwin is also obviously the namesake of Tony's first A.I., Jarvis, whose voice was subsumed
into the Vision during the events of Age of Ultron.
While Agent Carter may not have set the world on fire over the course of its two seasons,
it did develop a devoted following, and it's not surprising that it's become the first
TV show to introduce a character that crossed over into the movies.
Not only did Kevin Feige have more involvement with its development, it was created by Christopher
Markus and Stephen McFeely, the credited co-writers of Endgame and Infinity War.
While Iron Man's daughter may be an invention of the movies, Scott Lang's daughter is anything
but.
Scott meets up with Cassie after a five-year time jump that, at the end of Endgame, appears
to be permanent.
In the meantime, his precocious daughter has grown up almost more than he can believe - but
if the comics are any indication of where her story's going, she still has a lot of
development to go.
In Marvel Comics, Cassie follows in her father's footsteps in messing with the world of Pym
particles to give herself radical size-changing powers, teaming up with her dad under the
names of Stature and Stinger.
At times, she's as much of a partner to him as the movies' Wasp is - and that's a relationship
we may get to see develop on screen as the movies continue.
While Endgame does in many ways feel like a rare conclusive chapter in the MCU, producer
Kevin Feige has said that groundwork is being laid for characters like Cassie to eventually
suit up as superheroes themselves.
Speaking to Heroic Hollywood around the time of Ant-Man and the Wasp's release in 2018,
Feige said, "[We're] taking our cue from the comics as
we always do - that's why we wanted Cassie, a very young Cassie in this movie, to be inspired
by her father.
Just planting seeds."
Now here's someone who could've come in handy in the fight against Thanos.
In case you haven't seen Doctor Strange — or just plain forgot about it — the Ancient
One is a character of major power and importance, preceding Stephen Strange as the Earth's Sorcerer
Supreme.
She shows up as the keeper of the Time Stone in Greenwich Village's Sanctum Sanctorum during
the events of the Battle of New York, tracked down by Professor Hulk in the hopes of getting
her to hand over her nice necklace.
In addition to revealing that Marvel's Sorcerers were indeed around to help out during the
Chitauri invasion, at least in their neighborhood of New York City, Hulk's encounter with the
Ancient One reveals that she has always known she would meet and be replaced by Stephen
Strange, who at the time of the Battle of New York is still a practicing surgeon.
Why she later claims in private conversation not to want to train him during the events
of Doctor Strange is just one of many little nitpicky inconsistencies that Endgame's time
travel story gives rise to, but considering how nice it was to see this character again,
we can deal with a spare plot hole or two.
"He reminds you of Kaecilius."
"I cannot lead another gifted student to power only to lose him to the darkness."
It is possible that you were too distracted by the sounds of weeping to really notice
who was attending the funeral of Tony Stark.
The bittersweet affair reunited a number of members of the MCU's deep bench, including
one slightly less-familiar face - a grown-up version of Tony's potato-gun-shooting pseudo-sidekick
Harley, who last hung out with Tony during his lowest moments of Iron Man 3.
As the events of that movie detailed, Harley is another kid with daddy issues whose family
life leaves something to be desired, much like Tony Stark himself, or his other surrogate
son, Peter Parker.
But Harley doesn't have the salve of a billion-dollar fortune or some over-powered superhero skills
to take the edge off his shoddy home life.
All he's got going for him is some witty Shane Black dialogue and an admirable resilience
to Tony's savage put-downs.
"Which happens, dads leave, no need to be a p----- about it."
At the time of Iron Man 3's release, some thought Harley might himself grow up to assume
some sort of Iron Man-adjacent mantle, a la War Machine.
While calls for that have pretty much faded among the fanbase, it's still nice to see
an older version of the character pop up to pay respects to the hero who was Iron Man.
We wonder if he's getting anything from Tony's will.
Jasper Sitwell is, perhaps, nobody's favorite character in the MCU, but he's been around
since nearly the beginning.
In the MCU, Sitwell eventually reveals himself to be on the HYDRA take - an allegiance which
was reflected in Endgame after the Battle of New York.
It just further hammers home the fact that those HYDRA infiltrators were in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s
business for the long haul.
In the comics, Jasper gets to remain a good guy for the most part, only being manipulated
onto HYDRA's team for a brief while.
Instead of being a bargain-bin bad guy that most of the Avengers could deal with in a
single backhand, he's one of the most accomplished agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
there is, serving as an interrogator for the organization, a right hand man to Nick Fury,
and even taking over as director of the entire organization for a time.
In true Super Smash Bros. fashion, everyone is there for the final battle of Endgame - minus
Black Widow and a cool pink robot, give or take.
But these absences are partially made up for by the surprise appearance of Pepper Potts
suited up in her very own Iron Man-style armor.
While she's certainly been in the thick of the action before in the MCU, the CEO of Stark
Industries has never been as formidable a player on the battlefield as she gets to be
in Endgame.
Pepper's arrival into the fray this time isn't some desperation move like the finale of Iron
Man 3, which saw her vaporize foes with the help of some volatile Extremis serum and Tony's
repulsor ray gloves.
Instead, she shows up in Endgame in a full suit of Iron Man-style armor, designed especially
for her by Tony Stark.
Sure, Pepper shows up to the fight as fan service more than anything else.
But she has an established a history as a heroine in the comics, where she's known as
Rescue.
Since she shows up to Endgame's last fight with around 50,000 other fighters in tow,
it's hard to see how that name makes sense in the movies.
But it was still worth it for that instantly-iconic back-to-back shot of husband and wife blasting
away at Thanos' minions together, working together as a team for one last time before
the end.
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