With allusions to previous MCU movies and references to comics that haven't made their way to the big screen, Avengers: Endgame reminds Marvel fans that the people behind the camera are just as enthusiastic as the ones filling the seats. Here are some lines in Avengers: Endgame that were more important than you may have realized.
I KNEW IT !
If you saw Avengers: Endgame in a packed theater, then the moment Thor's hammer Mjolnir flies into Captain America's hand probably inspire done of the loudest and most enthusiastic responses from the audience. If not, then it's at least met with enthusiasm from Thor himself, who yells "I knew it!" as he spots Cap threatening Thanos with the legendary weapon. So what did Thor mean by "I knew it?" In an early scene in 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron, Thor gives the rest of the team permission to try to lift Mjolnir. Thor sits back, confident none of his meremortal teammates will prove worthy to wield the hammer… until Steve Rogers gives it a shot. That brief nudge, and past comic book stories in which Cap has proven worthy of Mjolnir, left some fans the orizing that Cap could've lifted the hammer but chose not to in order to spare his teammate any humiliation. Apparently, the Odinson was one of those fans. When Thor yells "I knew it!" he betrays that he thought Cap was faking way back in 2015 as well. And how couldn't he? Cap's as worthy as they come.
MADE FOR THIS
Speaking of Thor and what he may or may not be worthy to wield, the thunder god initially thinks he's the only one capable of using the new Infinity Gauntlet to bring back everyone Thanos purged in Avengers: Infinity War. The team argues about it and eventually it's the Hulk who convinces everyone he's the only guy for the job. As he does, it's made clear he's thinking about a conversation he had seven years before with Tony Stark. In Avengers, as Stark and Bruce Banner look for a way to track the Tesseract, Downey brings up Banner's "Other Guy" and compares it to the Arc Reactor, which at the time was still the only thing stopping shrapnel in Stark's chest from killing him. Banner understands Stark’s suggestion that the Hulk saved Banner’s life in the gamma ray explosion, but isn’t totally on board with the idea. “It's a nice sentiment. Saved it for what? “I guess we'll find out." In Avengers: Endgame, he finally finds out what he was saved for. Explaining that he's the only one who can wield the Stones and that their radiation is mostly gamma ...the same as the radiation that turned him into the Hulk ...Banner says, quote, "It's like I was made for this."
STRANGE FUTURE
When Hulk goes back in time to 2012's Battle of New York, his assignment is to retrieve the Eye of Agamotto, a.k.a. the Time Stone. Instead of Doctor Strange, the Hulk finds the Ancient One waiting for him at the Sanctum Sanctorum. Banner and the Ancient One argue over whether or not it makes sense for her to risk her own timeline by handing over the Stone. It's when the Ancient One learns that Strange gave the Time Stone to Thanos that she changes her mind. She tells Banner, quote, "Strange is meant to be the best of us," as she gives him the Time Stone, meaning that she realizes her future student wouldn't surrender the Stone unless there was a good reason. Considering what happens in 2016's Doctor Strange, the Ancient One's reaction is interesting. Four years from when she calls him "the best of us," she'll have Strange physically thrown out of Kamar-taj. "Teach me … No." You could call this a contradiction, but it could also suggest a lot more complexity to the early Sorcerer Supreme and her decisions. Did she expect Strange to eventually show up and wrestle with the decision of whether or not to let him in? Or perhaps ...sensing Mordo's potential forturning on his allies ...did she kick Strange out just to see what Mordo's reaction would be?
STOPPING TONY
Shortly after Tony Stark figures out timetravel, he settles down on a couch with Pepper and talks about what he should do next. He tells her that part of him wants scrapall his work, box it up, and drop it to "the bottom of the lake." This is the same Pepper who almost left Tony's employ in 2008's Iron Man over his armored adventures and who was ready to break up with him over his constant "tinkering" in 2013's Iron Man 3. She clearly developed a sense of resigned acceptance since we last saw her, because her words seem to be what convince Tony to take his new innovation to the Avengers. After listening to her husband, Pepper tells him that trying to stop him has been one of the few great failures in her life. It's accurate, as anyone who has seen all the Iron Man entries can testify, but there's a bitter sweet irony you don't see until the end of the movie's climactic battle. After Tony uses the Infinity Stones to wipeout Thanos and his forces, he collapses and struggles to hold on to what little life he has left. Pepper wills herself to smile at her dying husband and tells him, quote, "You can rest now." And so he does. Finally and tragically, Pepper gets Tony to stop.
AVENGERS...ASSEMBLE!
When Captain America proves himself worthy of Mjolnir, it isn't the only time in the final battle that the old soldier has fans clapping and cheering. After the heroes Thanos purged in Avengers:Infinity War finally appear along with the forces of Wakanda, Kamar-taj, and New Asgard. Cap takes his place at the head of this army of resurrected friends. He leads the charge against Thanos dark forces with the line comic book fans have read so often, "Avengers… Assemble!" You may not even realize it until that moment, but we've been waiting for over ten years to hear Cap say it. He may have led the team in 2012's Avengers, but he never said the line. He even teased us with it at the close of Avengers: Age of Ultron. "Avengers…." When Cap finally says the line in Endgame...if you hadn't realized it before ...it suddenly occurs to you the MCU architects waited a long time for that line, and man, was it worth the wait.
YOU'RE SO BIG!
It's Emma Fuhrmann playing Scott Lang's daughter Cassie in Avengers: Endgame ...not the younger Abby Ryder Fortson, who plays her in Ant-Man and Ant-Man & The Wasp ...but that doesn't stop Scott from recognizing her when he returns from the Quantum Realm. At the end of their reunion scene, Scott says,"You're so big!" It seems fairly obvious ...and it's something adults say to kids all the time if they haven't seen them for a bit. "You’re so big and so well grown." But it has a double meaning understood by fans of the comics. In 2004, the comic book version of Scott Lang was seemingly one of the fatal victims of Marvel's Avengers Disassembled event. In the wake of his death, his daughter becomes the hero Stature as part of Young Avengers. Like her father, she has powers that can make her smaller or bigger. In a tragic twist, Stature dies just after her father is brought back to life in 2010's Avengers: The Children's Crusade. Thankfully, Cassie rejoins the land of the living and is reunited with her father in 2015's Avengers World #16 because, you know. She's a Marvel Comics character, so it's pretty much mandatory.
CLINT! GIVE IT TO ME!
After Thanos unleashes his assault on the Avengers compound, Hawkeye is the first to get his hands on the new Infinity Gauntlet. He holds onto the thing for a while, fighting off a swarm of Outriders and surviving an attempt to steal it by the 2014 version of Nebula. But once the purged heroes return and things get real, Hawkeye calls for help. The first hero to respond is Black Panther, who calls out, "Clint! Give it to me!" It's not a particularly memorable line until you remember how these characters met and the fact that they only exchanged two lines of dialogue before Endgame. In particular, their entire conversation was about Hawkeye's real name and how little it mattered, so it's kind of funny that's the name Black Panther uses in Endgame. In 2016's Captain America: Civil War.. during the airport battle and shortly after Ant-Man shocks the other heroes by turning giant instead of tiny. T'Challa advances on Hawkeye. The conversation that follows is short and to the point. "We haven’t met yet. I’m Clint." "I don’t care." Apparently, he started caring just a little more by the time Endgame rolled around.
HAIL HYDRA
One of the best action sequences in 2014's Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the tense and eventually violent elevator scene, as S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives ...who are actually Hydra agents ...slowly fill an elevator Steve Rogers is taking, and the old soldier soon realizes he's walked into a death trap. Avengers: Endgame gives fans a scene acting as both sequel and prequel, as it takes place moments after Loki's capture in 2012's Avengers. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are transporting Loki's scepter when the Captain America from the future intercepts them in the elevator. He's able to convince them to hand over the scepter when he whispers, "Hail Hydra." The line references the Marvel Comics storyline that introduced a version of Captain America who was secretly serving Hydra. This was extremely controversial, and Captain America: Steve Rogers writer Nick Spencer received death threats over it. Hydra Cap is eventually defeated at the end of the 2017 line-wide event Secret Empire. Endgame also echoes that series when ...shortly after getting the scepter ...Captain America 2019 is forced to fight his double from 2012, just as the real Steve Rogers defeated his Hydra counterpart in Secret Empire.
ASGARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
There are a lot of sad moments in Avengers:Endgame's resolution, but one of the funniest involves Thor and the Guardians of the Galaxy. Boarding the Benatar with a heavy sack, Thor treats the space-faring crew as old friends. He slaps Star-Lord on the back and says, "Asgardians of the Galaxy! Back together again!" Thor's reference to "Asgardians of the Galaxy" is more than silly wordplay. In 2018, Marvel premiered the comic Asgardians of the Galaxy, featuring Asgardian characters on a space quest. The most recognizable characters to MCU fans would be Skurge the Executioner, played by Karl Urban in Thor: Ragnarok, and a younger version of Loki, who begins the series hidden in the Destroyer's armor. There's also Valkyrie, Throg the Frog of Thunder, and the Thor-like Earth hero Thunderstrike. Considering that Asgardians of the Galaxy premiered in the second half of 2018, Thor's line actually brings up a chicken-and-egg question of exactly who is referencing whom? Depending on exactly when the scene was filmed, is Thor referencing the comic in that scene, or was the Asgardians of the Galaxy comic inspired by that line from the script?
MOVING ON
Shortly after we see Cap leading his support group, he visits Black Widow at the Avengers compound. He talks with his old friend about moving on from the purge, telling her: "I keep telling everybody they should move on. Some do… but not us." Cap's talking about accepting the losses he and Nat have suffered rather than trying to find a way to reverse them, but there's a bitter sweet foreshadowing to the line as the movie continues. By the time the credits roll, Captain America and Black Widow are two characters who have definitely moved on. Black Widow sacrifices herself to get the Soul Stone from Vormir, while Steve Rogers uses his quest to return the Infinity Stones to recapture the life he lost when he plunged into the ice in Captain America: The First Avenger. If you weren’t already crying, that reveal most likely triggered a few happy tears.
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