Here's How Captain America Will Die In Avengers: Endgame
We all know its coming. Some way or another, one of the original Avengers will be making their exit once Endgame rolls around. Thanos put the situation into perspective the best: “... Dread it. Run from it. Destiny arrives all the same. And now, it's here...” Two different primary characters look like they’ll be taking their grand leave from the MCU: one of them is Tony Stark, and the other is Steve Rogers, more commonly known as Captain America.
Captain America is official the first Avenger of the MCU. He had a pretty rocky start coming into the fold with his first movie, but he’s since then become a fan favorite, and one of the most beloved members of the team. He’s a living icon, but as we all know, his journey will probably reach its end in Endgame.
For a few years now, Chris Evans has been talking about moving on from the role of Captain America. It’s been all over his social media feeds for a while now. If he were going to do it, Endgame would be his best bet to get out. It’s the end of a decade long story, making it the perfect platform for an actor to make a grand exit (even if the rest of us will miss him). Still, for Chris, it makes sense. The physical requirements it takes just to be Captain America are taking their toll on him. He’s in the same situation that Hugh Jackman was in when playing Wolverine. Sometimes you just want to eat something other than chicken and rice without having to think about how much exercise it will take for you to work it all off.
So let’s talk about how exactly Steve Rogers’ Cap could dip out from the MCU. The general idea floating around is that Cap will bite the dust before Endgame comes to its conclusion. But there may be another possibility for him as well. We’ll talk about and analysis how his character story can lead him to either possibility.
Sacrificial Death
If Cap is going down, then, of course, he’s going down heroically--there’s no question about that. The character can settle for nothing less than a blaze of glory that results in the safety of his friends and family. Both of Captain America’s sequels--the Winter Soldier and Civil War--are pretty much testaments to the fact that for Captain America you either go big or you go home. Cap is just the kind of character who would put himself on the line like this. He’s never shown anything contrasting.
Back in Captain America: The First Avenger, before Cap got everything special about him from a bottle, the one thing he had going for him was that he was a standup guy. Becoming Captain America only amplified this. Steve has always had the heart of a soldier, and he’s always wanted to be a soldier--to be someone that fights for what they believe is the right thing. Self-sacrifice is actually one of the first solutions he would go to. Back when he was in training, Steve threw himself on top of a grenade when everyone else panicked. This, of course, was a test, but he didn’t know that when the situation was happening.
The sole reason why Captain America even ends up in a block of ice is because he decided to try and sacrifice himself for the greater good. Instead of allowing the Hydra plane he overtook to crash into New York and kill everyone, he chose instead to crash in a remote area. He plunged the plane into a nosedive and aimed at what was supposed to be a body of water but instead turns out to be a sheet of ice. He does this despite knowing full well that the impact has a very high chance of killing him and forcing him to leave behind every relationship he was just starting to develop.
When Captain America wakes up, he finds himself 70 years in the future. He’s alive, but he ended up sacrificing everything he ever knew. But waking up in a future filled with other super-powered beings like himself looks to have only humbled him even more. Becoming part of, and leading the Avengers team granted Steve a group of like-minded and life-long friends. If he’s willing to give it all up for a group of complete strangers, you know he’ll go above and beyond for friends a family.
Of course, his worlds collide when he learns that Bucky is alive in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and not only is Bucky alive, but he’s a brainwashed super soldier of Hydra on top of that. Cap loses track of Bucky in his effort to bring down S.H.I.E.L.D, and that clearly eats at him, but he reencounters Bucky in Civil War. This is where Cap’s loyalties play a hand in his overall fate.
Steve learned in the Winter Soldier that Hydra may have had a hand in killing Tony’s parents, and he also gained an inkling that Bucky may have been the tool Hydra used to do it, but he wasn’t entirely sure of that fact until the climax of Civil War. Zemo showed Cap, Bucky, and Tony that Bucky was the one who killed Tony’s parents. This puts Cap in an awkward position. He knew the death of Tony’s parents wasn’t an accident because Dr. Zola’s computer all but told him Hydra had them killed, but he never let Tony in on this. He kept it a secret from him, and now Tony was standing in the same room with his parents' murderer: Steve’s best friend from the past. Steve can’t let Tony kill Bucky over something Bucky himself wasn’t privy to, but at the same time, Steve knows he’s also in the wrong over the situation because he was sitting on this information the whole time.
Cap ultimately chooses Bucky over Tony and dissolves their friendship, but this only promotes a sacrificial death for his character in Endgame. Tony is just as much of a brother to Steve as Bucky is to him, even if Tony wasn’t able to see that during the Civil War climax. The situation got so out of hand that Cap didn’t have the chance to redeem himself.
When things finally hit the fan in Infinity War, the original Avengers team still spends most of their time separated. Tony and Cap never run into each other at all. But Cap gave Tony a way to contact him in Civil War. If Tony ends up surviving deep space, then Endgame will have the potential to be a completely different story in the separation regard. This time, instead of working against each other, Tony and Cap will have to work with one another, and maybe in some moment of desperation, in a moment where Cap can prove that he truly does deserve the Captain America mantle, he’ll save Tony from dying by giving up his own life. With his death will come the opportunity for Tony and the rest of the Avengers to save the universe. Or, his death will result in the universe being saved. Either way, Steve Rodgers’ Cap will die doing what he always does: putting himself on the line.
Back To The Past
“A week from now--next Saturday at the Stork Club…8 o’clock on the dot. Don’t you dare be late.” Peggy says this to Steve right before he crashes the Hydra plane into the ice. It’s a futile date that the two of them set up in the midst of Steve’s crisis--a way for them to lighten up what they both knew was a hopeless situation. As such, this date was made with the idea that Steve would die in the plane crash, not that he would be preserved in a block of ice for over 70 years. If Steve was just going to survive the crash, then the date that he and Peggy had setup could have actually happened. This the first thought that pops up in Steve’s mind even when Nick Fury tells him that he not only survived being at the point of impact of a plane crash but has been in a coma for 70 years. This is news that would shock and surprise anybody else, but for Steve, he’s just upset that even though he survived the impossible he still somehow managed to miss his date with Peggy. If that isn’t a sign that he loves her, we don’t really know what is.
It broke his heart to see Peggy again in Winter Soldier. She had never forgotten about him. Even when she had moved on and married someone else--had kids and a family all her own, she had never forgotten about him. Even when she was suffering Alzheimer's, she had never forgotten about him or their promise to meet again--to have that date at the Stork Club.
Peggy has been an instrumental part of Captain America’s decision making throughout the entirety of his trilogy. She’s even the reason he decides not to go through with signing the accords in Civil War. Her memory to him is just as precious as his memory is to her.
Cap doesn’t belong in the current timeline, at least not as a young man. His time was back in the 1940s. We mentioned that he gave up everything he ever knew when he decided to make the Hydra plane crash back in The First Avenger. He’s figured out a way to live with the modern world, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s happy with it. But if Marvel decides that they want to write off Captain America with a happier ending than death, then they may have already planted the seeds to do so.
Time travel has been heavily teased as a plot device in Avengers: Endgame. The Ant-Man and the Wasp end credits scene teased it through time vortexes, and Samuel L. Jackson even said that Captain Marvel has the ability to just time travel naturally. Scott was abandoned in the quantum realm with the vortexes at the end of his movie, and if Captain Marvel really does have the ability to time travel, her movie is definitely going to explore it. So we have two different options available for time travel--two different ways for Cap to achieve a happy ending.
Maybe, if Cap does end up surviving Endgame’s battle, he’ll make a choice. This one would be different from the ones we’re used to seeing him make. This choice would be a selfish one rather than a self-sacrificing one. With the possibilities of time travel now revealed to him and with the universe restored, and Thanos defeated (presumably) maybe Cap will decide it’s time for him to go back to where he belongs, and he’ll know just the date that he wants to return to.
