***SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: ENDGAME, OBVIOUSLY***
Avengers: Endgame ends the way many predicted – with a few big names sadly no longer being with us, but all those that had been turned into dust during The Snap returned to life (including Spider-Man).
Tony Stark has died, Captain America got to go back in time to be with Peggy, and Thor has headed off with the Guardians of the Galaxy – but apart from that, it seemed like a happy ending and back to the status quo.
Only it is not quite.
After the prologue, Endgame jumps forward five years after The Snap, with the planet trying to adjust to losing half the population.
When Bruce Banner finally used the Infinity Stones to reverse The Snap, he does so by bringing everyone who disappeared back to the present day – five years after they disappeared.
They haven’t aged at all, and as Spider-Man says to Tony Stark, the don’t even appear to have known that any time at all has passed.
This is obviously massively going to impact all of human society – but the film does not really address this. Think of how awkward this will be: all the people who have moved on with their lives. What about all the people who are now with new partners, and their previous-dead husbands and wives have just reappeared. That is a lot for Jeremy Kyle to deal with.
It is obviously something future films will deal with – but it sets up a weird world for those to be set in.
In particular, what will it mean for Spider-Man: Far From Home, which comes to cinemas on July 2nd?
Previously, producer Amy Pascal said that will “start a few minutes after Avengers 4 wraps as a story”. But the trailer definitely does not look like it takes place five years in the future.
Peter Parker returned at the same age he was in Homecoming – will this mean he is now five years younger than half of his classmates, who will have graduated high school? This would be a real shame – we saw at the end of Endgame that Ned was seemingly still his age, and therefore probably also got snapped, but the cast of youngsters in Homecoming was on that film’s highlights. We really hope this doesn’t mean Flash Thompson, MJ and the rest could be absent from Far From Home.
