Avengers: Endgame SEEN IT thread - SPOILERS AHOY!

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761

Originally Posted by Grestarian View Post
Regardless of interactions by the Time or Power stones, Banner and Stark need only include a clause like “and everything is okay” in their wish composition to have the Reality Stone just plain make everything okay. And, yes, that’s intentionally a pretty broad brush with a lot of magic ink so that, addressing a common example, a remarriage would be nullified and the original couple would be back together and the kid that came out of the remarriage would still be around and, most importantly, everybody would be fine with it because the Red Gem would just plain take care of all those nanoscopic details everywhere.

A stretch? Why?

In modern times, marriage, divorce, and remarriage are no longer sanctioned or prohibited by religious authorities [Well, there’s that one hold-out, isn’t there?]. In modern times, couples split up and get back together years later, often with relationships during the intervening period. In modern times, there are people who participate in multi-partner amorous relationships. In modern times, people deal with the offspring resulting from other relationships (step-children from prior relationships, unintended progeny from affairs, et al) by including those children as family members. In modern times, whole families merge – The Brady Bunch was a comedy of its time, but now it’s no longer considered unusual, shocking, or worthy of five seasons of anecdotes to compress into scripts. I’m not saying it happens all the time and I’m not saying every case is amicable and level-headed. But these things do happen even now.

The critical difference that the Reality Stone could introduce would be the injection of understanding and compassion into everyone – everyone who experienced the Snap and everyone who survived the Snap – so that they know (who couldn’t know; it would be news all over the universe) the Snap occurred, they know five years passed before the Return, and they compassionately accept that some people had difficulty being alone during that time.

Some people even discuss during their relationships “What would you do if I died tomorrow? Would you find someone else, or just go on alone?” and what they would prefer from or for each other. Lots of comedy scripts have come from spouses with terminal diagnoses and angels returning to help (force) the widow(er) into another suitable-to-the-deceased relationship. Lots of horror/ghost stories have been written about angry ghosts who don’t like the widow(er)'s replacement choice. The Reality Stone would just negate the need for anyone’s death and preclude the comedy/horror aspects. The survivors would have (did) go on during the five-year Absence and the Returned would just accept and deal with it compassionately.

Is compassion a bad thing to wish for?

Besides, it’s The Reality Stone. The entries I’ve seen about it (Marvel and MCU Wiki, Marvel Fandom wiki, et cetera) state that it can alter reality even in ways that are physically or otherwise impossible – and that’s before the Power Stone gets added in. And, as someone else noted, the addition of the Mind Stone should make it possible to weed out the rules-lawyer/obnoxious DM twists and enact the user’s compassionate intent instead of wickedly wrecking the results – not withstanding Tony’s death*.

And I’m still pissed that Vision didn’t come back!

–G!

  • There were mumblings about Robert Downey Jr. being tired of the Stark gig since the end of Iron Man 2; this was just his grand send-off.
762

I remember it like he does, not like you do.

763

This is actually *worse *than what I thought you meant. So…you are envisioning people knowing they were married to someone for three years, remembering everything that happened, but also knowing that now that their formerly snaptured spouse is back, they are just going to go back and be with them and not carry on with their new spouse any more (even if maybe they secretly liked them better–or maybe even if the snaptured spouse used to beat them). Although they will still take care of the children they produced. And the snaptured person will have no time elapse from their POV, but they will just instantly deal with all the change. :eek:

So basically, you are envisioning a shit-ton of brainwashing, repeated over and over billions of times (just here on Earth). Yeah, no. Do. Not. Want.

764

For all that, it would have made more sense for “time rewind, Thanos loses, everyone happy” which is a lot cleaner than “So you were married but not-married but your spouse has magic compassion and your kids have 1.5 - 2.5 parents and everyone is happy and…”

765

LOL, right. Except that I do like the story element of Tony only being on board if he can not undo the past five years for his family.

766

A new question has occurred to me. I stopped watching Agents of Shield a couple of seasons back but the show is still on the air. While they didn’t do much in the way of crossovers, they did establish that the series is set in the same world as the movies. So how did they handle the Snap and the five year disappearance on the show? Or did they just ignore it?

Responses should probably be spoilered I suppose.

767

And that “just here on Earth” is a huge point. Even if we concede that Tony Stark could come up with a good answer to undoing all of the confusion caused by the five missing years, how could he possibly do the same for the entire universe? He’s not going to understand the social mores of how alien races mate and raise their children.

768

The way it was described, Tony wouldn’t have to know–the sort of “non-mischievous genie” in the Reality Stone would take care of all the deets. (Still do not want.)

769

[spoiler]They’ve just ignored it. In one of the final episodes last year, which aired while Infinity War was out, there was a very offhand reference to it - something like

“Have you heard about the alien attack in New York?”

“I don’t watch the news anymore. It drives me crazy”.

This season, which is supposed to be at least a year later, but certainly not 5 years later, is absolutely not in the post-snap world. No characters are missing, there’s no mention of half the population disappearing, etc. The writers are taking the position that since they didn’t know when the new season would actually air - before or after Endgame, they wrote it as pre-snap. The reality IMHO is that the MCU/Feige does whatever they please (as they should) and the show was left behind a long time ago.[/spoiler]

770

They should definitely portray the snapture.

771

To add on, Agents of SHIELD actually introduced time travel and multiple timelines last season (before Endgame did). So it’s safe to assume that the show is now existing in a separate timeline where the Avengers were able to stop Thanos before the snap.

772

Bruce was able to restore everyone who disappeared, without actually knowing each of the 3 billion disintegrated human beings (to say nothing of everyone who disappeared everywhere else in the galaxy.) For that matter, he was able to restore them without knowing how to form a human body out of dust. The person wearing the Gauntlet just has to let it know what they want to happen - the stones figure out the rest. So massive mind-wipe/mental manipulation could be done without knowing the specific mental characteristics of every species in the galaxy.

That said, I’m also opposed to this interpretation.

773

But just how strictly do you construe “what they want to happen”? “I want to restore everyone who was killed by the snap (and Natasha)” is a clear, simple wish. “I want to make everything peachy-keen forever” is not: Just what do you consider to be peachy-keen?

774

Are you asking me? It’s not my theory and I don’t support it. I’m just pointing out that the gauntlet clearly doesn’t rely on the user’s personal knowledge of how things work. It takes a desire and fulfills it. I have no idea how it would handle something abstract and unquantifiable like “Make everyone happy.”

775

I’m with Chronos on this one. I can see the stones being able to carry out a clear direction like “kill half the living creatures in the universe” or “bring all those creatures that were killed five years ago back to life”. But I don’t think they can extrapolate a vague direction like “bring all those creatures back but adjust things so nothing’s awkward”.

776

Right, especially since doing so would involve overriding eons of evolution and millennia of development of social norms.

777

I haven’t read the entire thread, but is there any explanation for why the gauntlet was on Thanos’s right hand when Tony took the stones, when it had been a left gauntlet for the entire rest of two movies?

778

It’s a different gauntlet from Infinity War. The one Stark created was right handed.

779

“Why are you smiling?”

“I know something you do not…”

780

This makes me laugh a little because although I’m right-handed, I cannot snap worth a damn with my right hand. Only with my left. Imagine if Thanos had finally gotten the chance for the re-snap and then had not been physically capable of the act.