But it didn’t. For the next five years, they thought that they had failed. If Quill hadn’t been dusted, I can’t imagine how he would have managed to cope with it.
Thor went into severe depression over not going for the head, but he at least didn’t let personal feelings get in the way of everyone else doing their jobs.
But it did. There was supposedly only one path that would ultimately lead to Thanos’s plan being defeated and that path required that Thanos make his initial Snap under specific circumstances. The point was that it was a hard and unpleasant path but an easy solution like “take the glove away” or “Cut off Thanos’s head with a magic space axe” would have ultimately resulted in a more definite and enduring failure.
Sure, part of that path was thinking that they had failed but it was still the only way to get them to the result where the dusted people are restored and Thanos’s plan is defeated.
I’m sure that Strange shared a plan with them. They put up what at least looked like quite the fight, and I doubt he told them that it was all for show.
The “Endgame” was all about getting Stark to sacrifice himself to defeat Thanos. There were other ways of accomplishing that. If they just hadn’t sent Nebula along to get the power stone, there would have been no need for a sacrifice, the movie would have ended with Banner’s snap.
The variables involved seemed to be far more than a 1 in 14 million chance for everything to work out in the end.
Fanwank: Only Hulk and Stark could. Hulk cause it fit him, and Stark cause he had all the tech to make it interact with his armor. With Starks help anyone could have but not on the fly…Captain Marvel probably could have survived it.
When Dr Strange gets un-dusted, he’s aware that everything’s Going According To Plan to have reached this point and immediately knows that he needs to assemble the troops for the giant final battle. So he knew that the winning (for certain values of winning) path wasn’t one where Banner snaps and it’s over; it had to involve the big final fight in which everyone had their part to play before Tony could self-sacrifice.
I disagree that SL failed. He would have felt like he failed, just like Thor felt like he failed. In reality, both “failed” in the same way as leaving late for dinner and thus avoiding getting hit by a freight train that crosses the tracks five minutes earlier. Sure, you technically screwed up in getting out the door but in doing so prevented a far greater calamity and thus manage to make it to dinner after all.
Right, but I am talking about how people would have felt. Starlord would have felt, and everyone else would have as well, that he single handedly foiled their own plan for stopping Thanos.
The glove was normal human size until Hulk went to put it on. I don’t see why it wouldn’t have changed to fit anyone else who put it on. Hawkeye would have done it, even or even especially knowing what it would cost him. Same with Rogers or Thor.
If, instead of his cryptic “We’re in the endgame now” he had said, “Don’t take Nebula to Morag”, then not only would Stark have felt that there actually was a plan past the point of the Snap, but would have also been able to have avoided the entire final battle altogether.
Of course, nice bonus for the universe where Thanos just suddenly disappears years before the events of Infinity war. ( I do wonder how that all works out. The Guardians never form, and if Ronan gets the stone (since Quill is knocked out, does Rogers just put it back, or does he make sure that Ronan’s minions don’t get it?) then he goes on a rampage and destroys at least Xandar.)
Yeah, especially that rat. That was the most important rat in the universe.
I don’t see how that could have been predicted or manipulated into happening.
It’d be more like causing a car accident that puts the passengers of your car into a coma for 5 years, but because of that, you weren’t hit by the freight train that would have killed them all.
And no one knew about the freight train other than Strange.
Still a win! 
Edit: After their defeat on Titan, Strange says “Tony… there was no other way” so obviously Quill didn’t screw up a workable plan.
There are probably tons of scenarios where Thanos is beaten but the galaxy/universe ends up even worse then just losing half population. In fact things nearly went that way. I have to believe those scenarios are part of the 14 million.
Probably. Stark asks “How many where we win?” and Strange says “One”. I’d assume timelines where they nominally defeat Thanos but half the universe is dead or worse don’t count as a “win” in Strange’s eyes.
At the same time, you could possibly say that if Strange had looked at 40 million timelines instead of 14m, there might have been two or three alternate paths to victory that didn’t involve everyone getting dusted first but you take what you got.
I think Endgame proved that even if they had gotten the Gauntlet away from him at the time, they really had no chance of ever beating Thanos on Titan. He beat up the Hulk no problem, and was able to take on Cap, Thor, and Iron Man on his own without the stones.
Not picking on you, just using your quote as a starting point.
From a movie standpoint, it’s insultingly stupid to have the master winnable plan be “whatever happens in the movie, no matter how obscure or how stupid, is part of Strange’s 1-in-14 million plan.” It excuses ANY plot hole, any bad writing.
Of course the goodguys are going to win - it couldn’t end anyway else, so 1 in 14M turns out to be a winning bet.
But the ending doesn’t come organically from the plot. It’s, to borrow from another thread, an “idiot plot”. Characters can only do one thing, no matter how bad it may be, no matter how idiotic they may act, and that one thing is the only correct solution to the Thanos problem. And if the 1-in-14M depends on a rando rat steppping on a button, well, it’s a good thing Strange didn’t tell anyone the details.
I don’t really disagree. At the same time, I don’t think that 1-in-14.6 million is “Step on a butterfly” territory but I do think that “We can’t defeat the Big Bad Guy here by just taking his toy away” is fairly valid (esp. when Strange literally says that their defeat was the only way). Whether or not Hulk offers someone a taco wasn’t relevant to the path but whether or not you cut Thanos’s head off probably was.
Maybe we shouldn’t even think of it as a Plan. The “plan” wasn’t to engage in a farcical battle with Thanos just to lose, it’s just that any path where Strange saw them win that fight turned out worse. So when Strange sees Quill flip out and start punching Thanos, he knows that they’re on the right path for now. That’s why Strange didn’t tell anyone exactly how to do it – besides there not being enough time and most of them would just rebel against the idea of ‘losing’ for five years anyway – but because it also wasn’t some elaborate mousetrap but rather just a bunch of shit that happens between A and B. A “plan” implies deliberate execution and that’s definitely not what happened here. Strange comes back to life and realizes that the correct shit took place (regardless of how much was directly relevant) so he should get on fulfilling the rest of that timeline.
Yeah, really he only had two parts to his plan before getting snapped:
If he hadn’t given up the stone willingly, the Ancient One never would’ve given it to Banner. And of course Tony was needed for Time Travel and the snap.
There was a popular meme in the leadup to Endgame that Ant-Man could defeat Thanos by shrinking, entering Thanos’s body through the rear, and then restoring himself to normal size. I just read that the Endgame screenwriters actually responded to this, noting that it wouldn’t work because Thanos is too strong, and the walls of his rectum would crush the unfortunate Ant-Man.
Just thought it was hilarious that it’s apparently canon that Thanos’s rectum is super-powered.
Seems cutting off the head would have been useful. He could have sling ringed to Thor’s location, and said, “Make sure you aim for the head!”
The is an indeterminate amount of time between when Strange does his look through the future and Thanos shows up. They obviously made some plans, as a fair amount of that was reasonably coordinated. I would assume that those were plans laid out by Strange.
And everyone probably thought it was going according to plan up until the punching started.
Make sure that a rat steps on the right switch on the console to bring Ant-Man back.
They’ve miniaturized tanks too, haven’t they? Buildings even.
Probably hard to get a briefcase-sized building to climb up Thanos’s butt.
I feel like with only 4/6 or 5/6* of the stones… sooner then later, Thanos would tire of his quest and grow disillusioned with everyone fighting against his noble aims. Then he’d just start being more like his comic-book counterpart.
I always wondered why Thor didn’t just cut off thanos’ arm then swing back for the killing thwack. Get the glove out of commission, then kill.
His comic book counterpart was the leader of a great army that went around conquering and slaughtering worlds, right?
Isn’t that pretty much what he was doing before he started this quest?
By the way I like how they casually invented an immortality machine and call that a failure.