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SPOILERS Endgame just fucked Peggy so hard
I have been trying to ignore it for a couple of days now, but like, OOF, Peggy. Oh Peggy. The decision to basically give Steve Tony's ending, and Tony Steve's ending is just a fucking disaster.
Like, Endgame and IW spent their entire runtimes trying to set Tony and Thanos up as foils for eachother. Both super geniuses with higher ideals that don't tend to match up with the cultural moors of their respective planets, both built on a foundation of blood and rubble and trying to build up some greater good, but both going in two very different directions with it. And ultimately, the core conflict of Thanos's storyline is that he chooses to harm his family to achieve his greater good. So, logically, as his foil, Tony should choose to harm his greater good to achieve his family. And most of Endgame legitimately SETS. THIS. UP. His entire shifting everyone forward 5 years thing is premised entirely ON THIS GOAL.
So, in IW, Thanos chose the greater ideal over family, he won, and it creates our core conflict for Endgame. The entire runtime of Endgame is Tony trying to have both the greater good and his family, trying to have it both ways. And, narratively, since he and Thanos are FOILS, that means at the end he should (drumroll), choose family and win! This is set up multiple times! Tony's conversation with his father. The multiple lingering shots between Tony and Morgan. Tony's interactions with Peter. The blue Pepper suit. The entire drugged out breakdown at the beginning of the movie. His interactions with Nebula. Literally the entire film is just a litany of Tony being surrounded by imagery of family coming together, being found and formed and fertilized. For gods sakes he talks to his wife about fucking potting soil. This is not a subtle fucking film!
So, there's all this constant setup that Tony is going to pull a Guardians of the Galaxy 1 callback at the end of the movie. He's going to get the stones, the Avengers are going to GODDAMN ASSEMBLE, the family is FOUND, and by dispersing the overwhelming power amongst all of these beautifully unified souls, we're going to put the world back to rights at long last. Tony will choose his family, TRUST his family (a callback to standing together, a discussion at the very beginning of the film? Narrative cohesion? Shocking!), and by choosing family over his own construction of the greater good, a true victory will be achieved. This is inevitably where the narrative takes us.
From here things get speculative. I imagine we would have seen something to the effect of, the blast is still too much, this isn't GOTG and a single stone, this is 6 stones, so Steve--ever the first to throw himself on an exploding grenade--shields Tony from the blast as best he can, dying in the process. Tony is irreparably harmed by this, forced into retirement, to raise his daughter and surrogate son as a successful father, in stark narrative contrast to Thanos who was likewise damaged by an infinity blast and died as a failed father. Steve just fuckin dies.
And why does Steven Grant Rogers just fuckin die?
Well, first of all, so we don't have to EITHER erase Peggy's children and husband from existence entirely or, far far worse, live with the knowledge that Peggy married Steve in the 70s.
Meaning:
1) Steve tried to fuck his own daughter, and as a father he did nothing to prevent this from happening
2) Steve let his wife work for Nazis for 40-ish years with no intervention whatsoever
3) Peggy definitely just had to fucking deal with the fact that for the rest of her life she got dragged for marrying a man half her age who looked suspiciously like her dead BF from 30 years ago.
But also, because it is a narratively strong ending to his character. Steve has always been a self sacrificial and frankly suicidal maniac. He has always been dangerously unhinged, and the only thing holding him together has been his mission. But his mission has gotten increasingly abstract, increasingly deranged, and increasingly insufficient as well. It's become obvious, over the last few films that being Cap is no longer satisfying to him as a person. He is a man who wants to just stop. But, where growing old, retiring and raising a family is an option for Tony, it isn't an option for Steve. The super serum alone precludes it, to say nothing of the psychological strains of his time traveling shenanigans and his own unmanaged and perhaps unmanageable (after all, medications seem not to affect him) psychiatric issues. Morbid though it be, where Tony CAN find rest and peace in other places--in his lakeside cabin, with his family and his friends--Steve legitimately cannot. It's time for him to rest, and death his that rest.
But anyway, that's just me. Me and my hottest of takes. As per usual.
Also if one more fucking person comes at me to say the support group dude who gets two lines and no name is "groundbreaking gay representation" in Marvel, instead of a calculated marketing move, I will literally punch their teeth out. Thank you and good night.
Like, Endgame and IW spent their entire runtimes trying to set Tony and Thanos up as foils for eachother. Both super geniuses with higher ideals that don't tend to match up with the cultural moors of their respective planets, both built on a foundation of blood and rubble and trying to build up some greater good, but both going in two very different directions with it. And ultimately, the core conflict of Thanos's storyline is that he chooses to harm his family to achieve his greater good. So, logically, as his foil, Tony should choose to harm his greater good to achieve his family. And most of Endgame legitimately SETS. THIS. UP. His entire shifting everyone forward 5 years thing is premised entirely ON THIS GOAL.
So, in IW, Thanos chose the greater ideal over family, he won, and it creates our core conflict for Endgame. The entire runtime of Endgame is Tony trying to have both the greater good and his family, trying to have it both ways. And, narratively, since he and Thanos are FOILS, that means at the end he should (drumroll), choose family and win! This is set up multiple times! Tony's conversation with his father. The multiple lingering shots between Tony and Morgan. Tony's interactions with Peter. The blue Pepper suit. The entire drugged out breakdown at the beginning of the movie. His interactions with Nebula. Literally the entire film is just a litany of Tony being surrounded by imagery of family coming together, being found and formed and fertilized. For gods sakes he talks to his wife about fucking potting soil. This is not a subtle fucking film!
So, there's all this constant setup that Tony is going to pull a Guardians of the Galaxy 1 callback at the end of the movie. He's going to get the stones, the Avengers are going to GODDAMN ASSEMBLE, the family is FOUND, and by dispersing the overwhelming power amongst all of these beautifully unified souls, we're going to put the world back to rights at long last. Tony will choose his family, TRUST his family (a callback to standing together, a discussion at the very beginning of the film? Narrative cohesion? Shocking!), and by choosing family over his own construction of the greater good, a true victory will be achieved. This is inevitably where the narrative takes us.
From here things get speculative. I imagine we would have seen something to the effect of, the blast is still too much, this isn't GOTG and a single stone, this is 6 stones, so Steve--ever the first to throw himself on an exploding grenade--shields Tony from the blast as best he can, dying in the process. Tony is irreparably harmed by this, forced into retirement, to raise his daughter and surrogate son as a successful father, in stark narrative contrast to Thanos who was likewise damaged by an infinity blast and died as a failed father. Steve just fuckin dies.
And why does Steven Grant Rogers just fuckin die?
Well, first of all, so we don't have to EITHER erase Peggy's children and husband from existence entirely or, far far worse, live with the knowledge that Peggy married Steve in the 70s.
Meaning:
1) Steve tried to fuck his own daughter, and as a father he did nothing to prevent this from happening
2) Steve let his wife work for Nazis for 40-ish years with no intervention whatsoever
3) Peggy definitely just had to fucking deal with the fact that for the rest of her life she got dragged for marrying a man half her age who looked suspiciously like her dead BF from 30 years ago.
But also, because it is a narratively strong ending to his character. Steve has always been a self sacrificial and frankly suicidal maniac. He has always been dangerously unhinged, and the only thing holding him together has been his mission. But his mission has gotten increasingly abstract, increasingly deranged, and increasingly insufficient as well. It's become obvious, over the last few films that being Cap is no longer satisfying to him as a person. He is a man who wants to just stop. But, where growing old, retiring and raising a family is an option for Tony, it isn't an option for Steve. The super serum alone precludes it, to say nothing of the psychological strains of his time traveling shenanigans and his own unmanaged and perhaps unmanageable (after all, medications seem not to affect him) psychiatric issues. Morbid though it be, where Tony CAN find rest and peace in other places--in his lakeside cabin, with his family and his friends--Steve legitimately cannot. It's time for him to rest, and death his that rest.
But anyway, that's just me. Me and my hottest of takes. As per usual.
Also if one more fucking person comes at me to say the support group dude who gets two lines and no name is "groundbreaking gay representation" in Marvel, instead of a calculated marketing move, I will literally punch their teeth out. Thank you and good night.
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Oh my god, this was a genius way to sum up those endings. Yes. Yes, that is what they did. Tony's trauma healing arc/PTSD arc is all about learning to step away and lower his hypervigilance and trust people; Steve's is... fucked if I know, but I'm pretty sure it involves working out how to actually give himself credit for the things he is doing, emotionally, and not burning himself out.
But, where growing old, retiring and raising a family is an option for Tony, it isn't an option for Steve. The super serum alone precludes it, to say nothing of the psychological strains of his time traveling shenanigans and his own unmanaged and perhaps unmanageable (after all, medications seem not to affect him) psychiatric issues. Morbid though it be, where Tony CAN find rest and peace in other places--in his lakeside cabin, with his family and his friends--Steve legitimately cannot. It's time for him to rest, and death his that rest.
I'm sitting here, as someone who tends to overidentify with Steve, nodding along: I cannot see that man pausing for more than ten minutes at a time without a Work to put himself into, whether or not he is actually replenishing himself enough to reach a healthy emotional place for himself. I can see him retiring from the superheroing business, sure, and aiming his considerable public influence at something else, like political lobbying; I cannot see him just retreating from everything to live as a purely private figure who isn't trying to go out and make the world better every single day with every talent he has. For one thing, I give him a week before he gets itchy and antsy and wants to Do Things.
And what, he's living with Peggy, making a life with Peggy, and given they just showed us he's having a hell of a lot of trouble integrating or connecting to anyone who hasn't gone through some level of trauma bonding or soldier-in-arms comradeship with him (Sam, Bucky, Nat)... and he's listening to Peggy talk about HER work, with nothing to bend his attention to, and he KNOWS Hydra is in the background, and what? he says dick fuck all about it? HOW?
I think that there are paths for Steve that lead to narrative healing, but while I can see him making this decision in a particularly stupid and desperate moment, I cannot imagine it being a happy ending for him or one that allows the timeline to continue along unimpeded. For Steve, in order to remove him from the larger metastory, you can't leave him alive, and since Chris Evans is Done with Marvel, that leaves death. And I think that would have been fine!
Also if one more fucking person comes at me to say the support group dude who gets two lines and no name is "groundbreaking gay representation" in Marvel, instead of a calculated marketing move, I will literally punch their teeth out. Thank you and good night.
Are people saying this? If so, wtf.
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1. Sharon is Peggy's niece not daughter, meaning prime steve made out with old man steve's niece not daughter
2. the movie explains time travel in that once each stone is taken from its original place the time line splits off, making a new one (its why nebula didn't die when she killed her 2014 self, that self and her now are from two different timelines and her 2014 self came through the quantum realm, that 2014 is thanos-less and gamora/nebula-less)
Steve was the one to take back all the stones (and thors hammer) to their universes/times, which I feel is the true culmination of his entire MCU arc, the man out of time has all the time in the universe to save the day once again, and he takes advantage of that (and the alternate 1970 universe he and tony made) to live out a couple of decades with peggy
If he did it right he could easily wait until hank pym makes more particles to go back through the quantum realm and back to the prime universe. A whole lot of people took "can't change the past" to mean that they cannot actually do anything to affect the past but they all did when they went back in time, and so it makes sense to me that steve could alter his own universe with peggy and the prime universe stays the same.
3. I don't think their endings should be switched like at all. The MCU isn't done with captain america (if falcon cap can prove anything) but evans is done playing cap and so they didn't kill steve, just gave him was closure he wouldn't have gotten in any other way; tony's ptsd stems from him not doing enough to protect earth, and it makes sense that his arc would close with him dying and finally getting some rest because he couldn't have if cap died in his place
if steve had died and not gone back, I would have called that the most tragic death like ever because he deserved more than being the suicidal man out of time canon fodder, If he stayed and didn't go back I would call that the most tragic ending because he deserved closure in a way that only time travel could secure, so he was able to go back, and hey! might die of old age on top of that.
and this maybe and unpopular opinion but I felt like the "Russo gay OC" was relatively sincere, just extremely underwhelming due to chinese censors, and overhyped in return
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I didn't mind Tony's death, though. He did choose family and he did win. He just won at the cost of his life. There had to be real consequences in exchange for reversing the snap and I think that Steve and Nat's deaths seemed fair.
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Problem is, I don't know where the hell to start.