Just like Thanos, it was inevitable that those wiped out in the Snap at the end of Avengers: Infinity War would be resurrected in Avengers: Endgame. Sure enough, the Mad Titan’s victims are all un-dusted by the end of the film, but their resurrection didn’t go as smoothly as we expected.
When the heroes finally reassemble all the Infinity Stones, they bring the fallen back to life five years later. It’s presented as a happy occasion, but fans have thought a lot about the emotional and societal upheaval that would come from half the population of the planet reappearing again, completely the same, while the survivors have moved on and aged half a decade.
So, why was this road taken? At a Q&A event held at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, the Russo brothers were asked this and while we don’t have a direct quote of Joe Russo’s response, Reddit user r/zackzhou630 was in attendance and has shared the gist of what the filmmaker said.
When asked why the dead were brought back exactly as they were, Russo argued that Iron Man didn’t want to change anything else. Ageing up the resurrected, for example, would be altering things too much and would be just like something Thanos would do.
This helps bring into focus why the Avengers didn’t try a more ambitious plan. With the power of the Infinity Stones, they could surely have rolled back time by five years so that the Snap never happened in the first place – as well as changing reality a tad, of course, so that Tony and Pepper’s daughter Morgan could still exist. But Russo’s comment that toying too much with the fabric of space/time would make them just as bad as Thanos (well, that’s arguable) explains it.
It’s now up to future installments in the MCU to adequately follow up on the aftermath of Avengers: Endgame. No pressure, Spider-Man: Far From Home.
