SPOILERS for Avengers: Infinity War & Endgame
Avengers: Infinity War left audiences with the greatest cliffhanger of cinematic history, more shocking and far more interesting to speculate about than even any of the twists in The Empire Strikes Back. The cliffhanger: How could our heroes possibly undo the mass murder of half the universe? Now the splendid Avengers: Endgame has been released and we’ve been given our answers, but while some of these answers can be taken at face value, others may be much more elaborate, and not at all obvious after a single viewing.
STRANGE I went forward in time... to view alternate futures. To see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflict. QUILL How many did you see? STRANGE Fourteen million six hundred and five. STARK How many did we win? STRANGE One.
Only one way to win out of fourteen million, we’re to believe, but at first glance the numbers don’t seem to add up.
(1) Why didn’t Dr. Strange see any futures where he, Tony, Peter, and the Guardians managed to remove Thanos’s Infinity Gauntlet? Surely Strange could have convinced Nebula to stop Quill from interfering, or simply convinced her to never mention Gamora, and they could have removed the gauntlet while Mantis had Thanos slumbering.
(2) Were there really no futures where Thor aimed for the head?
(3) In the final confrontation on Earth, the Avengers had the combined might of Iron Man, Thor with Stormbreaker, Captain America with Mjonir, Captain Marvel, Wanda, all of Wakanda, and all of the Masters of the Mystic Arts. Why didn’t Dr. Strange see any futures where the Avengers played hot potato well enough to keep the Iron Gauntlet out of Thanos’s hands?
Also, another question from Infinity War that many might have described as a plot hole, (comically referenced by Ryan George of Screen Rant):
(4) Thanos effortlessly turned Mantis and Drax into ribbons with the reality stone. Why didn’t he turn every one of his opponents into ribbons throughout the rest of Infinity War?
Thanos likes long walks on the beach, bubbles, gazing at moons, and sometimes throwing them.
Questions (1), (2), and (4) are answered simply by this: Thanos was faking.
At Knowhere, Thanos mastered using the reality stone to fake a scene. He was able to convince Gamora, one of the most dangerous assassins of the galaxy, that she’d successfully skewered her with a dagger—but lo and behold, the Thanos she’d stabbed was an illusion. I’m guessing he didn’t stop there.
The battle at Titan wasn’t a regression for Thanos, or him going easy with the reality stone because he wanted a challenge. It was a learning opportunity. At Titan, Thanos mastered using the reality stone to fake a scene while using all three of his stones to engage in real combat. Though he felt real to punch and kick…
PETER Magic! PETER More magic! PETER Magic with a kick!
…he was no more real than the version of Thanos on Knowhere. Just real enough to punch back. An avatar, perhaps controlled remotely by the real Thanos, who was never in any danger. He wasn’t being arrogant; he was being cautious.
Now confident in his ability with the reality stone, and now having acquired the time stone, Thanos proceeded to Earth. He dismantled Earth’s defenders with ease. After acquiring the mind stone, only one being in the universe could surprise Thanos: a wrathful Thor, with a weapon that could prove to be the Infinity Gauntlet’s match. But thanks to Thanos’s careful caution and preparation, it didn’t matter. When a Stormbreaker-skewered avatar snapped its fingers, the real Thanos was snapping his fingers elsewhere. When Thanos said, “You should’ve gone for the head”, he was simultaneously giving a legitimate piece of strategic advice (Thor’s 1,500 years old, he should know to go for the head by now) and giving false hope (going for the head wouldn’t have actually mattered). It’s archetypical Thanos: maliciousness hidden within a guise of reasonableness.
This explains why no possible engagement on Titan or Wakanda could have resulted in Thanos’s defeat. Dr. Strange may have deduced this after the first few hundred thousand futures he explored, and afterward focused his efforts not on stopping Thanos, but on undoing the Snap afterward. Early on he probably noticed Ant-Man’s idea to travel back in time, and he probably thought Scott was an idiot. But after a million futures explored, Strange was getting desperate, and he probably also noticed Tony’s reaction to the idea: not one that dismissed the idea as impossible so much as impractical. Maybe Tony just needed some time to recover from his defeat and then additional time to develop the new technology. Strange could focus on futures that kept Tony alive along with a strangely confident Bruce, and hell, Rocket could help too. There was just one problem.
Or rather: many, many problems.
You see, Tony didn’t have time to develop miraculous time travel technology. The Earth as a whole didn’t have that kind of time. The Earth was missing its Sorcerer Supreme, and the Sorcerer Supreme’s most important weapon: the time stone.
STRANGE Dormammu, I've come to bargain! DORMAMMU You've come to die. Your world is now my world. Like all worlds. STRANGE Dormammu, I've come to bargain!
Dormammu, Galactus, Dr. Doom, you name it. The Earth can attract a lot of hostiles over the course of five years, and they would always distract Tony from doing what he needed to do. So that’s why Dr. Strange focused on for his next thirteen million explorations: Finding a snap where Thanos will just so happen to remove all the biggest, nastiest, planet-devouring threats from Earth’s corner of the galaxy.
At fourteen-million, six-hundred and five, he found it.
So now we can return to question (3). Did Tony really have to die? But that’s not really the right question. The right question is: In the grand universe of possible futures, what does the final confrontation in Endgame represent?
I can tell you it doesn’t represent the only fight that beats Thanos. Nine times out of ten, a heavy hitter like Wanda or Thor is going to keep Thanos busy while an agile flyers like Iron Man or Captain Marvel delivers the Iron Gauntlet to anyone capable of thinking with Portals, and boom, any further Snaps are out of the equation. The rest of the fight becomes a battle of attrition, trying to minimize casualties until eventually, inevitably, the Avengers beat down both Thanos and his armies.
No, this confrontation represents the most likely of confrontations with Thanos. Iron Man’s technology will always make him the best suited to keeping the Iron Gauntlet away from Thanos, and Iron Man will always prove to do whatever it takes. Why risk Thanos getting the gauntlet back, when Tony could end the conflict immediately? Why risk his allies dying, when Tony can sacrifice himself and limit the casualty count to one? If Dr. Strange had searched through forty-two million futures instead of fourteen, every extra win he discovered probably would have played out in a similar fashion. That’s because after Hulk undid Thanos’s snap, the carefully curated events of Endgame (the five years, the time travel, the rat, etc.) stopped being a reflection of Dr. Strange’s heroic search. Instead, they became a reflection of Tony’s search for heroism.
You thought I’d end this post with a picture of Iron Man, didn’t you.
Rambling After 