[9.4/10] Stop and consider the magnitude of this achievement. *Avengers: Endgame* is not just a film. It is not merely the “season finale” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is the culmination of eleven years of multifaceted storytelling that balances dozens of characters, ties off story threads that have stretched and weaved and intersected over the past decade, and crafts a final challenge worthy of being the capstone to this mega-franchise. That it happened at all, let alone that the series ends on a note so poignant, funny, and exhilarating, is an absolute miracle -- or at least, if you’ll pardon the expression, a marvel.

Rest assured, if you’ve never seen an MCU movie before and decide, for some inexplicable reason, to jump in here, you will be helplessly lost. Those hoping for standalone accessibility will be frustrated. But one of the best features of Endgame is how layered yet modular it is. If you’ve only watched the Avengers team-up flicks, you can still keep up with the film given its easy-to-follow structure and brief explanations of how we arrived here. (The latter are typically laden with wisecracks to help the medicine go down). If you’ve dipped into the other major MCU films here and there, you’re liable to appreciate the cameos and connections that make this installment feel as much like a reunion as it does a finale. And if, like yours truly, you’ve watched the whole series from beginning to end, you’ll love both the little callbacks to past moments and personalities, and the way the film expertly weaves twenty movies’ worth of relationships and personal developments into one final, unfathomably satisfying tapestry.

Endgame can be essentially divided into three parts: (1.) the hangover from *Infinity War* (2.) the “Time Heist” and (3.) the final confrontation and epilogue. For a film with as many characters and stories as this (presumably) last outing for the original Avengers team has, that structure helps keep the movie from feeling ungainly. There are clear goals and distinct changes in the objectives from hour to hour that keeps the film manageable, even nimble, as it ties so many stories and personalities together.

The first hour of *Endgame* is easily the most heartbreaking. The most commendable thing the film does is take time to show our heroes coping with that unimaginable loss. *Endgame* certainly takes a page from the first Avengers flick by spending its first act getting the band back together, but not before it deals with what split them apart. Having an opening twenty minutes where the good guys kill Thanos, but all hope of reversing his grim deeds has been lost, is a deft choice that immediately pumps the brakes on the audience’s expectations, and gives the Avengers reasons to make good on tensions that have been bubbling up for years. Before the film dives into making things right, it stops to process what went wrong.

That means taking stock of where the Avengers are five years after the events of *Infinity War* and feeling their pain and efforts to heal. There is something heartening in seeing Steve Rogers still leading support groups and trying to make lives easier for people. There’s something piercing about Natasha keeping the lights on for The Avengers but still feeling the loss of her wayward best friend. There’s something funny but sympathetic about Thor’s reaction to his belief that he’s failed being to wallow in distractions and simpler pleasures. There’s something touching about Ant-Man reuniting with his now-grown daughter who thought she’d lost him forever. There’s something bitter about Hawkeye turning into a murderous ronin after the devastating loss of his family. And there’s something oddly right about Tony only being able to accept the quiet life after his worst fears have come to fruition, with a wife and a daughter and a cabin on the lake. Savvy viewers know that the dusting at the end of *Infinity War* is destined to be undone, but *Endgame* doesn’t shy away from showing the effects it had on the survivors in the ensuing, difficult five years, which makes those losses matter and serve as meaningful motivation, even if we know they’re unlikely to be permanent.

But, of course, a blockbuster film can only permit itself to wallow for so long. After everyone is reunited and convinced that Scott Lang’s longshot effort to right what went wrong is worth a try given the magnitude of what was taken, the fun, and the “Time Heist”, begins.

It’s there that *Endgame* becomes, at least for long stretches, an enjoyable romp, finding a different, more diverting gear that most Marvel movies kick into sooner or later. The chance to have our heroes dip back into key moments of MCU history, playing around with old friends and enemies, using knowledge of the past and the future to bring humor and clever twists to the fore, is an utter delight. Whether it’s Captain America having to go toe-to-toe with himself like some live action Capcom game, or War Machine and Nebula reframing the opening to the original *Guardians* movie as idiocy, or Steve sidestepping another elevator fight with a well-placed “Hail Hydra”, this stretch is what lets the Avengers be those lovable, mischief-making scamps that we’ve enjoyed watching even apart from the world-moving stakes and personal struggles.

And yet, the film also uses those hops through time to underscore those internal struggles as much as it revels in the fun of being a cameo-coated heist flick. Iron Man and Captain America both go back in time to the 1970s, where Tony resolves the daddy issues that have been at the fore of his personal issues since *Iron Man 2*, and Steve is haunted by being both unimaginably close and unimaginably far from his greatest love. Thor has an unexpectedly touching reunion with his mother circa *Thor 2*, that helps him recover from the debilitating sense of being a failure. And last, but anything but least, Black Widow and Hawkeye realize what it takes to obtain the soul stone, and struggle with one another to pay its price themselves.

It is one of the more affecting sequences in the film, as two heroes essentially compete to save the other and sacrifice themselves. It’s one of the tensest fights in the film, given the obvious stakes, and shows the pair of “badass normal” in the Avengers at their best, in ways both personal and pugilistic. Natasha wins, and firmly and finally erases the red from her ledger, giving her life to save the world and doing so for the family and feeling she never thought she’d fine. It is a noble, satisfying, and hard but heartening death, that gives Black Widow the high point of the act before the massive, final rumble begin.

That’s one of *Endgame*’s canniest choices. It shows our heroes succeeding in their wildly improbable (if somewhat inevitable) mission, but that being only half the battle. The time-skipping reassembly of the Infinity Stones, and a painful but fruitful snap from The Hulk brings all of the old dust mites back, but that’s when the final bout of trouble begins. In a clever twist, 2014 Thanos used 2014 Nebula’s connection to her 2019 predecessor against her and, with knowledge of the Avengers’ plan, travels to the future to stop hit. Surveying the aftermath of his original plan, he decides that it did not go far enough. He resolves to gather the stones once more to remake the universe in his image from the ground up, one without a memory of what was taken from them, and calls in his army to see that it happens.

It’s there that the rousing fanservice of the film erupts in earnest. Every fight-worthy MCU character of note (save those poor unloved T.V.-based heroes) bounds onto the screen at once to tear through Thanos’s goons together and stop the Mad Titan from completing his plan. The outcome of the skirmish is never in doubt, but its beats are as fistpump-worthy as anything you’re likely to see in cinema. Captain America calls Thor’s hammer as he, Iron Man, and the God of Thunder himself take on Thanos in three-on-one close-quarters combat. Black Panther saunters in triumphantly with his usual infectious resolve and Spider-Man swings back into action to ease Tony’s conscience. Captain Marvel gets the “Big Damn Hero” moment, and the utter thrill of seeing every warrior, fighter, and ally The Avengers ever crossed paths with assembled in one place take on Thanos’s equal and opposite army is a brand of high mark no other film can claim.

It is, in a word, uproarious, in the best possible sense. That final rumble is pure crowd-pleasing, with moments that verge on the pandering, but which never stop flooding the audience’s pleasure centers with superheroic dopamine. While the results are inevitable, the chills and spills to get there are too enjoyable to care, as *Endgame* makes good on its ultimate crossover promises to give anyone and everyone a moment to shine.

That closing salvo feeds three themes that have been with the Marvel Cinematic Universe almost since the very beginning. Time and again, the *Avengers* flicks have focused on the idea that these heroes are vulnerable when trapped in discord, but nigh-unstoppable when working together. For Tony Stark in particular, *Endgame* works as the final confirmation idea that, however much he may want to put the world on his back and go it alone, it takes trusting his teammates, and seeing the fruits of so much affection and connection from so many people, to save the world.

That effort, however, costs Tony his life. When all other options are exhausted, Tony himself nabs the Infinity Stones from Thanos’s gauntlet and, at the cost of his own life, snaps his enemy’s forces out of existence. It is a mirror image of the end of *Infinity War*, with all of the alien aggressors fading to flakes of ash, and Thanos himself crumbling under the weight of his crestfallen disappointment rather than looking with satisfaction upon a grateful world.

But those events mirror *Infinity War* in another, more spiritual way. Time and again in that film, Thanos was able to win because The Avengers were not willing to sacrifice one another to stop him. They were not willing to let others die, let alone put them in harm’s way, even to secure a victory. Here, on the other hand, we see the opposite side of that nobility. All of these heroes put their lives on the line to stop Thanos, but only Natasha and Tony know and accept the specific costs of their actions. Thanos loses not only because of the friendships and alliances forged in the name of defending what’s right, but because he underestimated the magnitude of the sacrifices that Earth’s Mightiest Heroes would make in order to protect the people they love.

That’s been Tony’s goal since the prospect of an unstoppable alien threat first emerged in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2012’s *The Avengers*. From his endless array of alternate suits meant to account for any possible threat in *Iron Man 3*, to his efforts to put an iron shield around the world in *Age of Ultron*, to his desire to save his compatriots from themselves with Sokovia Accords, Tony has arguably been obsessed with defending the world from the worst it can offer. In his final moments, Pepper tells him that he’s succeeded, that they’re safe now, that his long labor is finally over and he can rest.

The predictability of that end weakens the moment a little, but it’s buoyed by the reactions of those closest to Tony, and the ballast that comes from paying off eleven years of personal struggles, trials, and travails from the signature character of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
It’s only in the film’s closing segments, where it tries to grieve quickly and pass multiple torches that its fumbles the ball a bit. Whereas most of the *Endgame*’s events have a surprising amount of focus given the scope of the film, it’s that last little stretch where the movie’s supports start to buckle under so much weight, and the moments start to feel more scattershot. And yet it all ends on a high note, with Steve Rogers finally getting the happy ending – the long, joyful life with the woman he loves – that he had lost for so long. The move requires a little movie magic, and some timeline-shredding consequences, but rides on the total joy of him finally getting that long-awaited dance with Peggy Carter, and the beautiful future it implies.

That scene epitomizes *Avengers: Endgame*, a film that by all accounts, shouldn’t work, and shouldn’t even have happened. If you think about the details of Steve and Peggy’s reunion for too long, the whole thing is at risk of falling apart. And yet it’s the end product of so many great emotional moments, so many clever twists, so many pieces of plot and character and feeling that have been sewn together over the past decade of storytelling, that it cannot help but feel earned. *Endgame* is an unprecedented achievement, one that marries the lighter thrills of comic moments and superpowered fisticuffs, with committed, long term character work and emotional depth. The Marvel Cinematic Universe will continue, but we still never have a cinematic event as big, as momentous, and as multifaceted as *Endgame* ever again. Thank goodness for all of the assembly that was required, undertaken, and finished with this capstone.