I recently watched Avengers: Endgame again following its digital release, and it got me thinking. It literally took all of the Avengers, with help, to save the world from Thanos. Thus the Avengers, despite the tragic losses of Tony Stark and Natasha Romanov, ended up victorious in the end. Steve Rogers even managed to finally have that dance with Peggy. But at what cost? While all worked out well for the heroes, the same can’t be said for the rest of world. There are still some extraordinary, remaining issues, the Avengers: Endgame’s unspoken tragedies, that the Russo brothers fail to address.
First and foremost, one of the biggest, unspoken tragedies of Avengers: Endgame is the state of the world. In the first act of the film, we see a world overwhelmed, still reeling from the effects of the snap five years later. Ships clog New York harbor. Garbage and debris litter city streets, and buildings still sit damaged and uncared for. Scott Lang, upon his return from the Quantum Realm, asks a random child ‘what happened here?” Well, what happens when half the world’s population returns instantaneously to a devastated planet? Dealing with the Earth’s issues was tough enough before. How will the population handle now having to clean up from the havoc to re-accommodate? It’s going to be tough to feed the billions that returned with only half of the planet’s food supply and production.
Unspoken tragedies of Avengers: Endgame
The five-year passage of time brings with it not only physical and ecological issues, but emotional ones as well. In one scene, director Joe Russo plays a member of Captain America’s support group. He talks of moving on and going on a date. Therein lies the issue: with Tony Stark’s snap, everyone wisped out of existence returns five years later. Many people have likely moved on, entered new relationships, possibly even started new families. The film fails to address this most gut-wrenching of Endgame’s unspoken tragedies. What happens when spouses and significant others return?
This doesn’t even get into the fact that their jobs are gone, bank accounts likely liquidated, homes sold or abandoned….
Sure, the Avengers saved the world from Thanos, and Steve Rogers got his well-deserved happy ending. But did they really save Earth from destruction? Or did their actions only selfishly, and temporarily, serve to benefit those that survived the initial snap in the first place? Those questions remain unanswered.
Maybe Thanos was on to something, after all.
