Avengers: Endgame has happened, and it has certainly been a monumental happening. The culmination of eleven years of storytelling and the 22nd film in a string of crowd-pleasing blockbusters, Endgame is snapping box office records at a pace that is leaving most other films in the dust.
The journey to Endgame hasn’t always been perfect though. The quality of the many entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has varied somewhat over the years. There have also been a few instances of questionable continuity and plot threads that went nowhere, but even so, it’s hard to argue against the fact that the MCU is a staggeringly impressive feat of long-term story development at the highest level. Individual tastes will vary, but even if you’re not a fan of what the MCU has to offer, how can you not be impressed by the amount of work, planning, and oversight it took to create so many stories with so many people and still make it feel like one cohesive universe?
Well, it seems that some people aren’t impressed. As with any creative or commercial endeavor that is massively popular, there will always be those who are eager to try to poke holes in the successes of others. Now that the spoiler ban has officially been lifted by the directors of Endgame, more people are openly talking about the film’s plot. And with talk about plot comes the deluge of people talking about plot holes.
Plot holes bug me. Or rather, talking about plot holes bugs me. Or to be even more precise, people talking about plot holes online generally bugs me because, for the most part, I think most of the plot holes people try to point out aren’t plot holes at all. I’ve discussed this idea before (go read my reaction to The Last Jedi for more insight on how I see plot holes), and now I’d like to take a look at some of the supposed plot holes I’ve seen people bring up so far for Avengers: Endgame.
To simplify things a bit, I will be looking at the ten points raised in one specific article. My ruminations tend to get lengthy, so I’ll be looking at the article’s ten main points in a series of posts. I stumbled upon this click-baity article while browsing other things about the MCU, and I couldn’t help but take a look. Here’s the link, but feel free not to click on this ad-laden page since I’ll be explaining all the points in my reactions below: 10 Things That Made Absolutely No Sense in Avengers: Endgame
One final note before I dive in. There are spoilers below for Endgame, obviously. Also, while the title of the article I’m looking at doesn’t specify that these are plot holes, the URL for the article clearly does. Alright, let’s get to it.
Three Points, No Holes
Three Points, No Holes
So, the first point raised in the article is actually three points. Let’s look at each one in turn.
First, the writer wonders how Captain Marvel located Tony Stark and Nebula in the Benatar (Quill’s/Rocket’s ship). While it’s never explicitly stated how Carol knew where to go, I think there are a few simple explanations. The post-credits scene in the Captain Marvel movie shows us how Carol met the surviving Avengers on Earth. We also know that Pepper Potts survived Thanos’s snap and at some point arrived at the Avengers facility. So at least two things could have happened.
One option is that the messages that Tony is shown recording near the beginning of Endgame were actually being received on Earth. Tony doesn’t know if they are getting there because he has no way of receiving a response, but the possibility is there. Whether Pepper received the messages (possibly in the suit that Tony created for her or in any of the tech she had lying around the house), or the Avengers received them at the base, it’s not a stretch to think that the Avengers knew at least the direction the messages were being sent from.
Another option is that Rocket simply knows how to find his own ship. It is shown in Endgame that the Avengers have the ability to scan for emissions and transmissions in deep space when Rocket explains how they know where to find Thanos. It’s entirely possible that Rocket scanned for the Benatar and knew at least approximately where it was. Even though the ship lost the power to jump through space, it still had enough power to support life for a few weeks. Surely Nebula would have initiated a distress beacon (kind of like how the Guardians were answering a distress beacon in Infinity War), and surely Rocket would have known how to locate it.
Now, I know the realities of sending and receiving messages that far across space is unrealistic, but clearly the laws of physics don’t work the same way in the MCU as they do in our reality. That has been established. So no, Captain Marvel finding Tony and Nebula is not a plot hole.
The second opening point in the article questions how all the Avengers survived the destruction of the Avengers facility towards the end of Endgame. After Hulk snaps and brings back everyone Thanos dusted in Infinity War, the Thanos from 2014 obliterates Avengers headquarters. Everything is reduced to rubble, but all of the people inside the building survive. How?
Well, most of the people inside the building were protected in some way. Everyone had suited up or otherwise took precautions prior to Hulk snapping because they weren’t sure how much damage the power released by the Infinity Gauntlet would make. So, Iron Man and War Machine were protected by their suits. Thor has god-like powers. Captain America has his shield and has an almost inhuman resistance to injury. Hulk is the strongest there is, and Ant-Man got real small. Nebula helped initiate the attack, so she took precautions. So that really just leaves Hawkeye and Rocket.
Rocket nearly did die. If not for Rhodey’s quick actions, Rocket would have drowned if he didn’t suffocate first. And Clint must’ve just gotten lucky. So really, that’s one lucky break. I don’t think that’s too far outside the realm of believability. Also, it’s not a plot hole.
And the third opening point is about the rat that brings Scott Lang out of the quantum realm. This isn’t even posited as a plot hole in the article, it’s just made to seem like a silly way to initiate the whole time heist scenario. It is silly? Sure, but it’s not so unbelievable. Think about it. In the post-credits scene from Ant-Man and the Wasp, the device in the van was already set to bring Scott back. Hope, Janet, and Hank were dusted just moments before they would have thrown the switch (so to speak). The rat in Endgame just threw the switch for them. Any number of coincidences could have made this happen. It didn’t even need to be the rat, and it didn’t need to be at that precise time. Really, Scott coming back almost seems like an inevitability given how easy it was to do it. What’s surprising is that it took five years.
That’s the end of the article’s first main point, and it’s about all the explanation necessary for this entry in my look at some of the supposed “plot holes” in Avengers: Endgame. Join me next time as I attempt to refute the assertion that the times the Avengers chose to go to during their time heist were terrible, plot-hole-filled decisions!