'Avengers: Endgame' Prods Viewers to Think About a Changing America

This article contains significant spoilers for Avengers: Endgame.

Can Marvel chart a new course for the United States with a single film?

The latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has powered its way to over $2 billion in ticket sales, putting it in a prime position to unseat Avatar as the highest grossing film of all time. The majority of ticket sales have come from international theaters, solidifying it as a global phenomenon. While Avatar ignored Earth-based political divisions, most of the Avengers are avowedly American: Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, War Machine, Ant-Man, and Hawkeye—plus Black Widow, who was born Russian but naturalized American.

With so many Americans taking center stage in the latest global zeitgeist, the film offers a vision of how the United States can understand its role in the global arena. Indeed, by the end, it tells a convincing foreign-policy narrative through symbolism and character development. While the United States’ heroes ultimately win, the old leadership doesn’t survive the fight, suggesting that the Avengers, and the United States, may need a new approach for the 21st century.

The MCU is no stranger to this sort of comparison. Political analysis was frequently brought to bear on Captain America: Civil War (2016), which boiled down to “two opposing groups of superheroes [that] represent the two principal theories of international relations: realism and liberalism.” But politics has been baked into the enterprise from the start. Iron Man (2008), the first of the MCU, begins in Afghanistan amid the ceaseless U.S. war (somehow, 11 years of MCU films later, the war is still ongoing). As a result of the war, much of the film’s plot centers on the titular Iron Man’s company giving up weapons manufacturing. Even Thanos, the villain of Infinity War (2018) and Endgame, is motivated by the political understanding that humans have been overtaxing the universe’s resources: Do you sacrifice people for the greater good?

Suffice it to say that these films haven’t been afraid of politics, though they do paint in broad strokes and bright colors.

On the one hand, Endgame is subtler with its politics than other MCU installments, with its main philosophical question already presented in Infinity War. As other critics have pointed out, the film, in many ways, aims to please fans of the series. There are continuous references to the previous films; the characters use time travel to practically go backstage in old scenes. They wink to the audience, like when Iron Man comments on Captain America’s bosomy bottom. And there are nostalgic nods to sacrifices characters made in the past: Thor’s mother, for one, who wasn’t turned into ash in Thanos’ Snapture, but instead was murdered by a forgotten villain.

On the other hand, the film’s later acts seem ripe for political interpretation. Captain America and team go back in time to steal the six Infinity Stones before Thanos can find them. As Cap is about to complete his mission of securing the Mind Stone, he’s interrupted—by Captain America circa 2012. Captain America 2012 assumes that Captain 2023 is the trickster Loki. A fight ensues.

In a way, watching two men donned in red, white, and blue tussle brings to mind the partisan battles that the United States has been caught up in since, in particular, the 2016 presidential race. It also reminds viewers of Captain America: Civil War. In that film, Captain America resisted Iron Man’s efforts to bring the Avengers under the United Nations’ authority. He “refuses to give up [the Avengers’] identity as an independent American force for good.” This fits with real-world dynamics, especially with the “many American politicians [who] continue to be wary of [the UN’s] influence to this day.” Simply put, Captain America behaves in the MCU in much the same way that the United States operates in the international arena: unilaterally.

The fight between the two Captains doesn’t last long. Cap 2023 is more experienced and quickly defeats the naive Cap 2012, using the Mind Stone to put him to sleep. Cap 2023 looks down and sees his own behind, commenting, “That is America’s butt.” Funny, yes, but Cap is also literally saying that he symbolizes America!

This metaphor echoes throughout the movie, especially in the climax. Thanos 2014 has come to 2023 to take the Infinity Stones from the Avengers. He catches the team unawares, such that only Cap, Thor, and Iron Man initially fight him. Thanos dispatches with Iron Man and Thor quickly, but Captain America doesn’t go down so easily. He’s found worthy enough to wield the hammer of Thor, and the two supermen go toe-to-toe. Slowly, Thanos chips away at Cap’s shield, sending patriotic specks flying. Then, Thanos hurls Cap across the battlefield. Cap struggles to his feet, his shield gone but his uniform still proudly waving the United States’ colors. It’s possibly the most heroic moment in a film stacked with them: Cap is the only thing standing between Thanos and victory, and, true to the paragon of patriotism he is, he intends to go out fighting.

Ultimately, reinforcements arrive, and, together, they save the universe. With Thanos defeated, there’s just one piece of business left: Captain America has to go back in time and return the Infinity Stones to their proper temporal places so that alternate timelines don’t spin out of control. He does this, but he returns to 2023 as an old man. Sam Wilson, otherwise known as the Falcon, approaches him. The wizened Steve Rogers bestows the Captain America mantle on this younger black man: a touching moment. And in the movie’s final scene, viewers see Steve in the past, living happily.

His job, at least as a hero, is done.

This final scene deserves a bit more parsing, particularly for what it telegraphs about the future. The United States is used to fighting alone, the flip side to unilateral actions. By putting Cap as the last line of defense, the film, in a sense, argues that only the United States can stay in the fight as long as is necessary. Everyone else regroups while Captain America fights solo. This includes the wealthy elite, symbolized by Iron Man, and other countries, symbolized by Black Panther (of Africa’s fictional Wakanda) and Scarlet Witch (of Eastern Europe’s fictional Sokovia). While these characters contribute to the Avengers’ victory, too, you could argue that it’s only made possible because Captain America survived for as long as he did.

Yet Endgame isn’t so simplistic or regressive with its politics. It realizes that the above is an old way of doing things, as indicated by Steve’s preference for the past. Captain America won the argument in Civil War and retained the ability to act unilaterally, which, as Tony Stark rightly points out in Endgame, hamstrung the world’s response to Thanos in Infinity War. By having Cap live happily in the past and return as an old man, the film argues that his—and, by extension, the United States’—unilateral approach doesn’t belong in the present.

In addition, the film suggests that, to avert whatever great disasters await the world in the future, the United States must learn from this experience and be forward-thinking. It must, in other words, look more inclusively to the future, which the film does in its closing moments, notably with Sam becoming Captain America. Anthony Mackie, who plays Sam, told interviewers that “it means a lot to me for my sons to see Captain America as a black dude and for me to be that dude to my sons.” Mackie is imagining a future where the United States can see itself in a black man, and where young black children grow up in a country that frames them as national symbols.

The world has flocked to a narrative that suggests that the United States’ time as a global hegemon is over—an important first step in imagining a new, more expansive future.