Like Infinity War before it, Avengers: Endgame is a marvel of storytelling, but is the execution
perfect?
Not really.
Throughout its three-hour runtime, Endgame takes some narrative turns that teeter on
the edge of nonsense, and some of screenwriters' choices threaten to ruin the movie if you
think about them too hard.
Here are the biggest plot holes in Avengers: Endgame that everybody just ignored.
Strange dissonance
During the film's time heist, Bruce Banner visits the Sanctum Sanctorum in 2012 New York
City.
He's searching for Dr. Strange, to borrow the time stone he's known to guard.
But instead of Strange, he finds the Ancient One, Strange's mentor, who doesn't meet the
doctor until the events of his movie in 2016.
Despite Strange not yet being the Sorcerer Supreme, the Ancient One has full knowledge
of who he is, and hearing that he gives away the Time Stone in the future is enough to
convince her to give up her own stone.
That's how much she trusts Strange, saying, "Strange is meant to be the best of us."
It's presented as a foregone conclusion, a predestined future that she's already aware
of.
But this doesn't match up with what we've seen before.
In the Doctor Strange movie, the Ancient One presents private doubts as to whether she'll
even train Strange, confiding in Mordo that she cannot take him on as a student.
Mordo has to convince her to train him, which flatly contradicts Endgame.
"I cannot lead another gifted student to power only to lose him to the darkness."
It'd make sense for the Ancient One to put up a front for Strange himself, but why would
she doubt him when he's not even in the room?
It's not magic, just a little plot hole between movies.
"I never saw your future.
Only its possibilities."
Delivered to your door
Just as Peter Quill sends the Avengers' plan off the rails in Infinity War, Nebula nearly
ruins everything in Endgame.
Thanks to her always-on wi-fi, the cyborg daughter of Thanos is found, captured, and
replaced by her younger counterpart in 2014, with her past self following the Avengers
into the future on Thanos' behalf.
Once there, she flips some switches on the team's quantum tunnel, targets Thanos' ship,
and opens a portal to bring him through.
Afterwards, the final battle kicks in so fast you're left with no time to figure out what
exactly just happened.
When the Avengers' Nebula is sent back to help retrieve the Power Stone, she leaves
with only enough Pym Particles for a return trip, particles which 2014 Nebula presumably
uses in her place.
She then uses the quantum tunnel to target Thanos' ship and pull it into the future,
with Thanos' ship somehow able to enter the Quantum Realm without the help of any Pym
particles or technology.
Also, if it's possible for the 2014 Nebula to target objects and pull them through time,
why didn't the Avengers do exactly that with the Infinity Stones themselves?
If Nebula can bring a ship through, why couldn't they bring some rocks through?
You can come up with all kinds of solutions for this, and reportedly, the Russo brothers
have begun explaining in interviews that the Pym particles were reverse engineered by Thanos
and Ebony Maw.
But even if that's the case, the movie doesn't show any of this, it just starts the explosions
and crosses its fingers, hoping you won't think too hard about it.
Snaps all around
At the end of Infinity War, Thanos kills half of the universe with a snap of his fingers.
It's a flourish that's ripped straight out of the comic books, and a gesture that became
instantly iconic.
But Endgame treats snapping your fingers as though it's an essential part of the way the
Gauntlet works, so much so that Captain Marvel is able to stop Thanos from destroying the
universe during the movie's final battle by holding onto his fingers, preventing him from
pulling off a snap.
But here's the thing, you shouldn't have to snap your fingers to exert the power of the
Infinity Gauntlet.
This isn't how it works in the comics or the movies.
While the Thanos of the movies does usually close his fist while wielding the Gauntlet's
powers, it doesn't appear that he really has to, and the fact that the snap does anything
kind of proves that.
It just seems like something he does more for the audience.
Once Thanos gets the Gauntlet on his hand, he should be able to rewrite reality with
little more than sheer willpower, from what the movies and the comics that inspired them
have shown us, you don't need to snap your fingers to have it grant your wish.
Rescue signal
Relative to all the movies that came before it, Endgame is like a fire hose of fan-service,
especially the final battle, in which dozens of characters line up to fight like a living
comics splash page.
It's an event that fans have spent years waiting for, but plenty of people still had to ask,
what exactly is Pepper Potts doing there?
We can readily accept the notion that the CEO of Stark Industries has become proficient
at piloting her own Rescue armor over the years.
It's not a stretch of the imagination that she'd learn the ropes of combat off-screen,
especially after Iron Man 3 saw her vanquish the villain herself while briefly supercharged
by Extremis.
She has as much of a right to fight as anybody else in the MCU, but the question is, who
called her?
The epic return of all the Avengers post-revival is implied to have been coordinated by Dr.
Strange, who got a hold of the other sorcerers on Earth and immediately set about reuniting
every fighter for a showdown at Avengers HQ.
But how did he know to call Pepper, who didn't suit up in her own Iron Man armor until long
after Strange was dead?
They only met for like a second.
Would he even know where she lives?
How'd that phone call go?
"Hey, Pepper, it's Steve.
Heading upstate for the final battle, come through, bring a gun or something."
Whatever the specifics are of who got ahold of her so fast, we now live in a universe
where Pepper freaking Potts got a shot off on Thanos, and that's pretty remarkable, whether
you like it or not.
Renewable resources
Much is made of the stakes at play in the Avengers' time heist gambit.
On top of playing with forces they don't quite understand, facing a threat that soundly beat
them before, the Avengers are also dealing with limited resources.
As Scott Lang tells everyone, the time travel trickery of the Quantum Realm relies entirely
on the proprietary Pym Particles invented by Hank Pym, who in death is unable to create
any more of them.
If they use up their supply on the heist without succeeding, they lose.
But the answer to this conundrum is right in front of the Avengers the whole time, and
it's kind of shocking that Scott, a career thief, doesn't think of it.
Instead of starting off their journey by trying to get the stones, why didn't they begin by
going back in time and stealing all of the Pym Particles they were going to need?
If the past can be mined for Infinity Stones and magic hammers, it can certainly be mined
for Pym Particles.
Even if they use them up and don't return them, Hank can just invent more.
Sure, it's possible that stealing the particles and not replacing them will create a slightly
different timeline, but this hardly feels like a big transgression, considering all
the other maverick improvisation the team gets up to during the heist.
The only reason the writers didn't take this route is probably because it would've lowered
the stakes.
Captain America's bogus journey
Everyone's got an opinion about Captain America going back into the past to live a life with
Peggy Carter.
Some people love it, while others think it betrays his character.
We're not concerned about any of that, we're just trying to figure out how Old Cap showed
up in the prime timeline.
Endgame makes its time travel rules very clear.
It's not Back to the Future style, where changing the past can change the future.
Here's how Professor Hulk explains it:
"If you travel to the past, that past becomes your future, and your former present becomes
the past, which can't now be changed by your new future."
It's all pretty simple, changes to the past cause different timelines.
So why and how does Captain America going into the past in the prime timeline lead to
him growing old and living a life in the prime timeline?
"The world has changed.
None of us can go back."
In the MCU so far, Steve Rogers has gone under the ice, hibernated for nearly 70 years, and
been revived to live a decade or so as one of Earth's mightiest heroes.
As Endgame closes, he goes back into the past to catch up on that date he missed with Peggy.
That past is now his future, a new future, independent of the one he previously hibernated
in.
It should have caused an alternate timeline.
Instead, it's implied that Steve went to the past of the prime timeline, which completely
goes against how Hulk says time travel works.
Whose shield is it, anyway?
Some people believe that Steve going into the past and living out his days as Peggy's
husband is a simple closed loop, that he always married Peggy, and just stayed off-screen
during young Steve's reunion with old Peggy during their meetup in The Winter Soldier.
In this theory, there have always been two Steves, one's just been secretly retired.
"He saved over 1,000 men, including the one who would become my husband, as it turned
out."
That's a weird way to put it, but okay.
Here's another question, then: Where did Old Steve get his shield?
Endgame's final battle results in the destruction of Captain America's shield, leaving it cleaved
in two by Thanos' blade.
He does not take the shield back to the past with him.
But when Old Steve shows up next to the pond, he has a shield in pristine condition.
How?
If Steve's time-hopping life is a closed loop, then there should only be one shield to go
around.
If Cap somehow stole his own shield while his younger self was under the ice, then that
would mean there would be no shield for his younger self to receive upon waking up, creating
exactly the kind of paradox that this movie's time travel rules are supposed to avoid.
So is Old Cap from another timeline, and just came over to drop a shield off with Falcon?
If so, how'd he get back to the prime timeline as a 100-something-year-old man?
Maybe it's not the real Cap at all, maybe it's just a gigantic plot hole that it'd be
best to stop thinking about.
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