#Thanos and the hand of fate series#

Thor, unable to deal with the extent of his failure to prevent this irreversible personal and cultural loss, goes for Thanos’s head. Nebula finally hears the words she has fought so hard to hear from her father: affirmation of her identity, affirmation that he holds some affection for her affirmation that in some sense, he is proud of her ⎯ just when she has let go of the need for that affirmation as the driving force in her life. Here Thanos utters the first of his final words: “Ah, thank you, daughter. Thanos’s declaration is met with disbelief, but Nebula faintly affirms that he must be speaking the truth: “My father is many things. He is a character who believes in fate, in destiny, in purpose, and he reveals this to the Avengers, telling them he last used the Infinity Stones⎯to destroy the Infinity Stones. Breaking the quiet, the Avengers blast in, pinning Thanos against a wall, brutally hacking off his hand to get to the gauntlet. Yet the first time we the viewer see Thanos, he seems far from a villain: he is tired, living a quiet, peaceful, rustic life. The reassembled Avengers (or those that remain of them) seek Thanos to make him reverse the Snap, bringing millions of beings back into existence. You have been warned.Īvengers: Endgame is staged in three acts, the first of which opens in the immediate aftermath of Avengers: Infinity War.

#Thanos and the hand of fate series#

This short series examines the last words and attitudes to death expressed by three key characters in Avengers: Endgame. Could this ever be a good death for Tony Stark.

Is this how one of the original Avengers will die, the trailer wants us to ask. I know I said no more surprises, but I was really hoping to pull off one last one” –a reflection of his character arc a reluctant acceptance of the inevitability of death a move to indicate that the acknowledgement of personal relationships at the end of one’s life means more than personal achievement. We hear Tony Stark recording a post-battle message for Pepper: “It seems like a thousand years ago I fought my way out of that cave, became Iron Man. We knew this from the first official trailer, which includes material that didn’t make it to the final cut. Which is, in some ways, ironic, as Avengers: Endgame is a film rife with deaths and last words. A cultural game-changer, Avengers: Endgame has smashed several box office records and is proof of how vibrant the superhero franchise is. But the first of the big ‘final’ cultural products we’ve spent over a month with is Avengers: Endgame, the MCU’s twenty-second film over an eleven year time period. We have yet to see what happens with the X-Men franchise and Dark Phoenix. Some, like Game of Thrones, have generated much disappointment. It so happens that at this point in time, a series of hit pop cultural shows and series have come (or are coming) to the end of a cycle. It’s funny, seeking a sense of completion. Guthke has written an entire book about our cultural preoccupation with last words, suggesting that encoded in our interest in granting people last words and memorialising them is our desire to find completion and a sense of immortality. Francisco “Pancho” Villa’s alleged last words, “Don’t let it end like this Tell them I said something important” cannot be verified, yet that sentiment of feeling the weight of the expectation of meaningful final words is immortalised in the 1934 film, Viva Villa!. This has led to literary texts providing individuals with poignant (or pathetic) last words that they may not have had time to utter in real life. At the same time, we hold a profound sense, as expressed by John Gaunt in Shakespeare’s Richard II, that a person’s last words can or should capture the sum of a person’s life. Although General John Sedgwick is a less-known figure, Wikipedia’s page on Last Words (as of May 21 st 2019) has helped popularise the irony of his miscalculated last words: “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance!” This sort of dark humour makes us want to laugh at the folly of individuals who believe, somehow, in their immortality, or their protection from a mundane death.

It is reasonably commonplace to meet a person who can recall Oscar Wilde’s (ostensible) last words: “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do,” and celebrate them as an embodiment of Wilde’s great wit. We have a cultural obsession with last words. What links Marvel’s blockbuster Avengers: Endgame and Shakespeare’s Richard II ? Jessica Lim reflects on destiny, “last words” and the pervasiveness of death talk in popular culture.