The Moral Implications of Endgame
***SPOILERS***
Endgame is an intriguing film to study because it really relies on the viewers not questioning the Avengers as the morally just side of the conflict. Further exploration into the film shows that perhaps we shouldn’t believe that.
Thanos was in no way right to make half the universe disappear, and honestly I think he was just a dick because I can think of at least five different ways off the top of my head that he could have achieved his goal of ensuring the universe’s survival, but that’s beside the point. Despite this, the conflict with Thanos brings some tough choices for the Avengers and it is hard to say if they made the right ones.
First, it is important to note that both sides of this fight believed that they were doing the right thing to save the universe. The fight essentially boils down to “keeping the status quo” vs. “doing the wrong thing for the right reasons”. As you look at the conflict from this perspective, the question becomes: is either side really the “good” side? For Thanos, he lost his homeworld to this struggle for resources, he grew up watching his world try and fail to fix the problem. His intentions were to save the universe from miserably dying out, even if his execution was less than good.
Now five years post-Thanos, the destabilizing effect of the snap could have very easily toppled governments, made the economy tank, and allowed dictatorships to rise out of the ashes of the ashes of these vital institutions. There is no way of knowing what kind of world the vanished are returning to and how their return will change the world once again. The status quo already changed too much for the Avengers to reasonably believe they could ever return to how it was before.
That issue with this arises when Tony makes his terms for his help clear; Morgan Stark had to stay. This completely makes sense, what father wouldn’t do anything in his power to protect his daughter? However, the team’s compliance with these terms is not quite as noble. The Russo brothers showed a couple of brief clips of the world post-snap. It was all dark and gloomy and empty, which makes total sense, but they failed to show what the world had really become. Or rather, as Carol Danvers pointed out, what every planet in the universe had become.
Turning away from a global view of the snap, the individual/emotional consequences introduce a more interesting moral debate. Anthony Russo himself cameoed briefly in the support group scene with Steve Rogers and exemplified how the snap had taken an emotional toll on everyone who survived. Tony’s insistence on bringing those they lost to the snap to the present rather than reversing what happened means that the people who suffered deeply and spent five years in agony, such a Clint Barton, or people who commited suicide as a result are left behind.
In Infinity War, Steve insists that they “don’t trade lives”, the very sentiment that gave Thanos the time to retrieve the Mind stone, and yet here he is trading the lives and well-beings of trillions for Morgan Stark.
With all this in mind, it brings into question whether the Avengers were unaware of these circumstances, willfully ignored them, or only considered the surface level results of their actions. And is any of these really the better option? While their intention of bringing those they lost back into existence was noble, perhaps we as the viewers need to as a basis to favor the “good guys” and demand more from our heroes as we do our villains.