Avengers: Endgame's Biggest Unanswered Questions

As the culmination of a decade and change worth of blockbuster movies, Avengers: Endgame finally gave fans a satisfying climax, bringing closure to an era of the MCU. Well, at least until the next giant, universe-threatening tyrant steps into the picture. After that, all bets are off... assuming that new menace isn't The Gambler, anyway. Then the bets are on!

For all the answers we got at the end of Endgame, there are still a few nagging questions that weren't entirely addressed by the time those credits rolled. Between all the time travel stuff and the roughly eight zillion characters, you definitely expect a few loose threads. Some of these questions go back multiple films in the franchise, while others were introduced in Endgame and then seemingly abandoned. What are we talking about? Snap on your spoiler gloves, because we're digging deep to find all the unanswered questions from Avengers: Endgame.

Once again, to be clear: Spoilers ahead!

Right off the bat, there's a bit of a disconnect between the way the Infinity Stones are built up in the previous movies and the way they're handled in Endgame. Literally handled. All the time.

In Guardians of the Galaxy, the Collector gave a whole Powerpoint presentation that explained how only a being of extraordinary strength can wield an Infinity Stone. A few seconds later, his lady slave grabbed the Power Stone and exploded to prove to audiences that he wasn't lying.

So fast forward to 2019, the year of the Endgame, which sees people tossing the stones around like so many raisins. Hulk and Hawkeye both held a Stone barehanded. Granted, those are plausible, at least. The Hulk is, if nothing else, a being of immense power. And Clint Barton was given the Soul Stone in exchange for his sacrifice, so maybe he was allowed to hold it? Maybe that counts?

Even so, it's not like the Stones in the gauntlet are shielded by anything, and yet half the Avengers got in on that game of keep-away with the glove. None of them even brushed a finger across an Infinity Stone? None of them caught it wrong, or slapped a palm over a Reality Stone or two? Oh well.

There was a lot of mantle-passing in the closing moments of Endgame, much of it done in heartwarming fashion. Old Man Cap passing his shield on to Falcon? Come on! It doesn't get much better than that. Even Clint hit a bullseye with his daughter, and he's already calling her Hawkeye. But what about Iron Man? Who's set to replace him?

The obvious choice is, of course, little Morgan Stark. She even had her father die in a battle with an intergalactic wacko. Boom! Stuff that in a box and label it Origin Story. But if that's the timeline the MCU is taking, it begs the question: When is the next time we'll see a version of Iron Man on the big screen? Morgan's, what, four years old? Less than five for sure, because snappenings. By the time she's old enough to strap on some nanites, the rest of the Avengers will be cashing Social Security checks and golfing in Florida.

It just seems like the MCU is banking hard on longevity if that's who they're setting up to be the next Iron Avenger, is all we're saying.

Months before Endgame's release, a theory started making the rounds that Tony Stark would make his own Infinity Gauntlet and reverse Thanos' snap. It didn't happen quite like that, but the theory was pretty dang close, and it brought up some really interesting points that we were all hoping would be answered in Endgame.

The one that's really roasting our goats is the idea that Tony has been feeling echoes across time from using the Stones. Across several movies, he's been having problems with his arm. If he had such immense power at his fingertips, some of that power might ripple backwards through time and give him arm problems as far back as Captain America: Civil War.

But Infinity War brought that ripple even closer to home. Remember how Tony had a dream that Pepper had a baby girl and they named her Morgan? A dream like that could have been another echo from the future, since Tony knew full well that he had a daughter when he used the Infinity Stones. And its placement in the film just before Endgame has to be more than coincidence.

Unfortunately, it's all still just speculation, since Endgame never really addressed that in any way.

Infinity War's big thing was unquestionably the snap. Thanos foreshadowed it, then the final battle came and he upheld his promise, turning half the universe to dust with a snap of his fingers. Cinematically, it's great — it's one instantly identifiable gesture of annihilation that also says, "Look how easy this is." From a comics perspective, it holds up as well. That's what he did in Infinity Gauntlet. Even in real life it's awesome, because all the audience members can act sassy and say "Ohhhh snap!" Actually... yeah, maybe that part's less awesome.

So then Endgame comes along, and the only way to make the Stones work is now... snapping. What? Is that in the Infinity Manual? When Professor Hulk put on the glove the first time, he was clearly picturing what he wanted to happen. If the Stones are powerful enough to bring back trillions of life forms with all their memories and costumes and dingleberries intact, wouldn't just wishing be enough without the snap?

Anyway, that part's fine. But in the final battle, it happens again... twice. Thanos tries to resnap his snap, fails, and then Tony Stark snaps to dust Thanos and his goons. You'd think they'd just be able to wave their hand and make their thing happen. Even the Stones are probably getting bored with all this snapping.

Let's face it: Any movie dealing with time travel is going to run into problems. For its part, Endgame did wrap up a lot of loose timelines, explain most of what needed explaining, and keep the plot moving. But out of all the time travel shenanigans, one question that was almost definitely intentionally left unanswered was the 2012 Loki's whereabouts. If you remember, while in the past after the Battle of New York, Stark fumbled the Tesseract and Loki snagged it while no one was looking and slipped away into a portal. By doing so, he presumably created a different timeline that didn't end up with him being choked by Thanos (although the original timeline's Loki did still get choked by Thanos).

So now there's a rogue Loki roaming another timeline, but the movie leaves that guy's fate completely unmentioned. What kind of mischief is he getting up to with the ability to travel anywhere in the universe?

So when Peter Parker comes back during that epic final battle, he tells Tony that he must have "passed out," because when he woke up back on Titan, Stark was gone. The implication there is that time didn't pass for the people who were dusted. Five years went by in the real world, but all the dust bunnies came back just thinking they'd taken a quick nap.

It goes over pretty smoothly, mainly because there's so much other stuff happening then, but during the wrap-up scenes we see Peter back in school, reuniting with Ned, and you start to wonder: How is society going to reconcile what happened? It's convenient that all of Peter's friends were apparently also dusted, so now they get to finish going through high school together. But what about the rest of the world? Most of these people essentially blinked, and shim-shabang, Citi Field looks suddenly looks like the apocalypse. Little Suzy's in college. Grandpa Jo got cancer and died. Picture that, but multiplied by billions. The world is going to have a whole heck of a lot of work to do fixing things up.

Finally, and most important of all, who DOES put mayo on a hot dog?