Moments The MCU Wants Us to Forget After Avengers: Endgame
Endgame shook up the MCU quite a bit. A few changes were expected. We knew Iron Man or Captain America would die. We knew the rest of the dusted Avengers would come back. We also knew that Thanos would bite the dust (like nearly every other MCU villain).
Admittedly, though, there were a few things that we didn’t know would happen. Captain America getting the Mjolnir was unexpected. Thor being fat was unexpected, and Black Widow dying was unexpected. But there were other moments in Endgame that were not only unexpected but seemed to make you think that Marvel was trying to make you forget a few things about the MCU.
The Hulk and Bruce Were Feuding
Professor Hulk was an expected moment. A lot of us predicted that Hulk was going to come back merged with Bruce Banner in order to create Professor Hulk (or Doc Green, whatever floats your boat). However, how Doc Green actually appears in the movie is quite unexpected. Mainly because he just… shows up. There’s no build up to it.
Throughout this first MCU story, the Hulk’s journey has been Bruce Banner's struggle for balance, and Infinity War hints that Hulk’s and Bruce’s struggle has finally come to a head. So you’d expect for Avengers: Endgame to actually show us how the two finally settle their differences. When the moment comes, however, Endgame introduces Professor Hulk with a throw-away joke. He just exists now. Granted while the joke was funny, it is a bit of a slap in the face to Hulk fans who were actually hoping to see how the hero reached this conclusion. It doesn’t help that Professor Hulk also doesn’t do much smashing when the final battle with Thanos comes along — at least not the way the big three did.
To add to this we still don’t have an in-universe reason as to why the Hulk acted the way he did in Infinity War when he refused to come out and help Bruce. If you keep up with Anthony and Joe Russo, you’ll know he does it because he’s tired of being Bruce’s attack dog. But neither Infinity War or Endgame give you this context, so to those of us watching, it just looks like Hulk is scared of Thanos, which is completely out of character for him. The Hulk calls gods puny. He leaps at enemies ten times his size without a second thought: him being scared of someone just doesn’t seem logical. But we’re digressing. The point is, Endgame makes it seem almost like the Hulk didn’t have an interesting struggle at all.
The Eye of Agamotto is Useless
The Eye of Agamotto is an important relic to Doctor Strange in the comics. One that has many different uses. It weakens his enemies, allows him to invade people's minds, see past events, and perform a bunch of other convolution that’s only possible through equally convoluted magic.
The Eye is just as much a recognizable part of who Strange is as the Cloak of Levitation — if not more so. It seemed like the Eye would take on this role in the movies as well, but the 2016 release of Doctor Strange had other ideas. The Eye of Agamotto, as far as we know, has no other function than to contain the time stone and allow its user to safely manipulate it. As of Endgame, however, the Time Stone has been destroyed. This means the Eye has been rendered virtually useless.
Even most of the spells and barriers that the Eye used to protect the Stone were cast by Strange. The Eye didn’t really do anything itself except to conceal the Stone from view. So if after Endgame we see Strange using the Eye for other purposes it’ll be clear that they’re probably trying to make us forget the fact that it was a more-or-less completely useless relic to begin with.
The Ancient One’s Strange Opinion
The Ancient One has always seemed like the type of character who knows everything, if she doesn’t, she’s close to it. So when the Hulk steps to the Ancient One of the past, it doesn’t seem weird that she knows she won’t meet Doctor Strange for five more years. It’s not even weird that she knows Steven Strange will be the best Sorcerer Supreme of them all. But then you remember what happens in the original Doctor Strange, and realize that Endgame may in fact be wiping out a few predetermined events.
In the original Doctor Strange, the Ancient One acts like Steven Strange is a gamble. She states to Baron Mordo directly that she doesn’t want to to train Steven because he might end up just another dark wizard. It doesn’t make sense for her to say something like that when she knew five years earlier that she would meet the best Sorcerer Supreme in Strange.
There could be an explanation to this. We did say that the Ancient One is pretty close to being one of those characters who knows everything. She said in Doctor Strange that she could see everything up to the moment of her death. It could be that she was just acting out events as she believed they were supposed to happen. She told Baron Mordo what she did because she saw herself doing it. If not, it looks like that moment in Doctor strange is meaningless.
Loki was a Good Guy
It’s looking like Loki’s about to get a hard reset on his character. For a few brief moments, Loki actually turned over a new leaf. He was a new man — or god, whatever — the point is that he was actually shaping out to be a future hero. Sure his career in heroism was cut fairly short when Thanos decided to snap his neck, but that’s still what his character was leaning toward in the end.
Endgame seems to have decided to trash all of that though.
The Loki of the past — the one who can’t seem to find a single damn to give about other people — nabbed the Tesseract. We don’t know what exactly Loki is up too but it can’t be anything good. This the same Loki who just got done trying to enslave an entire planet after all. The same Loki who was willing to let his brother, Thor, live the idea that he, Thor, had been the cause of the deaths of his mother and farther.
Considering what we know about Loki’s upcoming show and what we saw in Endgame, it’s looking like Loki’s going to back to the basics, like, the whole “hero thing” never happened. Tragic. It’s not that villain Loki isn’t a good time, mind you, but if he’s just going to be back to being nothing more than the god of mischief, why pay any attention to him at all in Thor: Ragnarok and Infinity War?
Bruce and Black Widow's Relationship
Avengers: Age of Ultron presented Bruce and Natasha as a budding item. A weird pairing, but one that makes some sense in the grand scheme of things (at least by the way Age of Ultron explained things). Thor: Ragnarok hinted that Bruce still feels something toward Natasha, but neither Infinity War nor Endgame actually addressed their relationship. Bruce and Natasha have an awkward greeting in Infinity War and that’s about it. Then they never speak on what happened between the two of them. They never addressed the fact that he disappeared for years after the Hulk essentially kidnapped him and trapped him in his own body.
This seems to be a reoccurring thing with the Hulk. A lot of his story elements aren’t actually fleshed out. This is more than likely due to the fact that he can’t have any solo movies for himself and has to have his story told on the sidelines. It makes sense in this case, but it’s still a bit weird that even Endgame (the final movie to feature the Hulk’s journey) didn’t address the two most important elements to his story: becoming Professor Hulk and his relationship with Natasha.
It’s also a bit weird for Black Widow’s character too. In the first Avengers movie she straight up says that she believes that love is for children — obviously a philosophy that she picked up from her time as a heartless assassin. This makes the moment when she actually does express that she feels something for Bruce to be a big one. To say she’s stepping out of her shell is an understatement. She’s basically going against everything she was taught to believe. So the fact that she never addresses what happened between the two of them makes it feel like it never happened at all.
Underwater Earthquakes
Unlike the others this isn’t a big story moment. It’s more of a throw-away line. Endgame itself also doesn’t really disregard the line: the writers do.
Anyway, while the remaining heroes are trying to keep things from falling into chaos, Okoye makes a comment about Wakanada experiencing underwater earthquakes. Now, if you’re an avid Marvel comics reader your first thought upon hearing “underwater earthquakes” was probably “Holy crap, their teasing Namor the Submariner,” and you wouldn’t be the only one.
For those of you who don’t know, Namor is Marvel’s version of Aquaman (or Aquaman is DC's version of Namor). He rules Atlantis. You know, that mythical kingdom that exists under water? Why take the time to mention underwater earthquakes if not to try and hint at a future Namor appearance? Well, the writer’s claim that they did it just to do it.
You have to admit that that sounds like bull. Marvel typically stretches the truth whenever it involves their future movie properties, so it’s possible that Namor really is coming in the near future. (Most people predict he’ll make landfall in Black Panther 2). Still, Marvel’s going to do everything in their power to make you forget this if they can.
Wrap up
The MCU is on its way to telling new stories after having its first successful run. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t a few things that they’ve either purposely or accidentally swept under the rug.
The Hulk in general just gets no justice. It’s not his fault his movies were terrible and his property suffered licensing issues early on. The character still deserved a lot more than what he got in Endgame. While he may have had nothing but sideline tales, they were still interesting, and the fact that his conclusion was rushed to the point of just being forgotten is a little sad.
Black Widow isn’t very different in this case. After having carried the female-hero side of things of the MCU for as long as she has, she’s just kind of thrown to the wayside. She dies and every female hero she paved the way for gets to show off the A-Force at the end of Endgame (yeah, we’re still pretty salty about that). She will be receiving her first stand alone title later in the fourth phase of the MCU, but it’s definitely something that should have come sooner.
The discrepancies of Doctor Strange’s universe are nowhere near as bad as what’s gone on with Hulk and Black Widow, but they are there. It’s nit-picky, we’ll admit, but we’ll also admit that we’re not above such things. While there is an explanation as to why the Ancient One said what she said to Mordo, the fact that she knows Doctor Strange’s legacy is nonsensical. She can’t see past her own death so how would she know Strange is going to be the GOAT of sorcerers? Strange’s Eye of Agamotto is useless, even despite relics being played up to be powerful and versatile objects in the very first movie, something both Endgame and Infinity War would have you forget with the way Strange was performing near-comic-book magic.
Namor and Loki are both up in the air at the moment, with one having more evidence than the other but evidence is still evidence.
