Avengers: Infinity War Ending Explained

Marvel's Avengers: Infinity War ending is one of the most controversial in superhero movie history. Here's what you might have missed.

This article consists of nothing but Avengers: Infinity War ending spoilers.

Well, it has been a fun 10 years, but Avengers: Infinity War marks the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Thanos won. Half of your favorites are dead. What a bummer of an ending, right?

Wrong.

The Avengers: Infinity War ending may seem bleak, but all it really does is promise more ass kicking to come when Avengers: Endgame opens in 2019.

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So what happened at the end of Avengers: Infinity War?

For all of Thanos’ talk throughout the movie of bringing “balance” to the universe by eliminating half of all life, nobody really expected him to be able to pull it off. The movie even lulled comic book fans into a false sense of security. The Infinity Gauntlet comic, which very much inspired certain parts of this movie, actually BEGINS with Thanos already in control of all six gems.

And that’s really the crazy part of this: everyone expected this movie to be the cinematic adaptation (in some form) of The Infinity Gauntlet. Instead, Avengers: Infinity War ends where The Infinity Gauntlet begins. That not only throws spoiler hounds off the trail, but helps create a greater “anything can happen” sense across both movies.

But yes, Thanos “snaps his fingers” and utilizes the full power of the unified Infinity stones. It isn’t just the heroes who have been making his life difficult throughout the movie who die, as we learn in the post-credits scene. Instead, he uses the Gauntlet to wipe out half of all life, not just on Earth, but in the entire universe.

What’s Up With Farmer Thanos?

I know I’m contradicting myself a little bit here right after saying that Avengers: Infinity War ends where The Infinity Gauntlet comic begins. But the pastoral Thanos is a nod to the ending of The Infinity Gauntlet comic, where after faking his own death to avoid total defeat, Thanos retreats to a planet where he can live in solitude.

He stayed there for a while, too.

Thanos' retirement farm

Of course, the remaining Avengers are going to have something to say about that. Speaking of which…

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Did Everyone Really Die in Avengers: Infinity War?

Well…not exactly.

So, there’s a pretty handy rule you can apply to all the Avengers: Infinity War deaths. If they died and you saw a motionless, lifeless corpse, they are probably dead for real and won’t be coming back. The one exception to that rule is Gamora, because I have a feeling that there are plans for her in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.

Anyway…

…anyone who crumbled into ash and blew away? That’s the kind of death you can come back from. It’s the old comic book rule: if there’s no corpse to bury, they ain’t dead…and even THEN you might want to double check. Seriously, do you really think T’Challa, star of one of the highest grossing movies of all time is going out like that before he gets a Black Panther 2? Of course not. Spidey has a Spider-Man: Far From Home already on the calendar for July 2019, so you can relax there, too.

All that’s the good news.

The BAD news is that the Avengers (and Rocket) who are still clearly among the land of the living (and even though we don’t see them here, that includes both Captain Marvel and Hawkeye) during the Avengers: Infinity War ending might be in for a rough landing in Avengers: Endgame. You’ll note that the only “real” survivors from the Avengers roster are the core team from the first movie. This means they’re being set up for some kind of epic conclusion…and what’s a conclusion without a few permanent dirt naps, right? But we don’t have to worry about that for another year.

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And it’s going to be a very long year before Avengers 4 opens on May 3, 2019. The full schedule of upcoming Marvel movies can be found here.