A rich chapter in superhero lore is closed. Avengers: Endgame faced a universe-sized task wrapping up a generation of remarkably deep plotlines spanning the entirety of the Marvel cosmos. It lived up to the hype. And, as has been the pattern, writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely accomplish their work with appeals—conscious and, perhaps sometimes, unconscious—to the Judeo-Christian story.
It must be this way. Great stories always draw from unplumbable well of the Greatest Story.
Marvel’s is a world filled with mythology and theology. Some of the characters are literal gods. Powers are not just super-strength and shape-shifting, but foresight, knowledge, and psycho-magical abilities. The Infinity Stones grant such gifts as omnipresence (Space Stone), omnipotence (Power Stone), and omniscience (Time Stone); and one of the gems is literally called the Soul Stone. In a culture said to be secularizing, belayed far down the chasm of postmodernism, what does it say that our most beloved modern myth is so inescapably spiritual?
While the characters aren’t flat—even angels have their demons, as it were—the Avengers saga is a straight-up good-versus-evil mythos for our time. I don’t know the heart-persuasions of anyone who brought the Avengers world to the real world, and I don’t assert Avengers: Endgame was a deliberate attempt to proselytize, but the traces of a biblical worldview and even the core of the gospel is so obvious across the storyline, it seems clear our cultural storytellers can’t help but retell the good news and the old truths, and the culture itself can’t help but be drawn to it.
Here are just a handful of ways the Christian faith showed up big in Avengers: Endgame.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!
Sacrifice (And Its Necessity)
Like so many good films, sacrifice is central. Avengers is no exception. In Infinity War, we see Vision, perhaps the most Christlike of all the Avengers, willingly lay down his life. In another heartbreaking scene, Gamora, beloved and bewildered daughter of the archboss Thanos, is sacrificed against her will so the supervillain can acquire the Soul Stone. In Endgame, a duo returns to Vormir for the same purpose, and this time our heroes actually battle for the place of sacrificial lamb. Ultimately, and to my surprise, Black Widow wins out, casting herself to Vormir’s depths so that Hawkeye, and the rest of the universe, might live on.
There are plenty of other slivers of sacrifice in Endgame and across the MCU, but the epitome comes in humanity’s supreme hero: Iron Man. In the final fight between the forces of good and evil, Tony Stark pays the ultimate price. And does so unreservedly. But the most fascinating thing about Iron Man’s sacrifice isn’t that it happened. It’s that it had to happen. Dr. Strange, who once possessed the Time Stone and could therefore see all possible futures, said he saw 14 million possible outcomes in the fight for the universe. How many held victory for the good guys? Only one. That means Iron Man’s self-sacrifice in the Last Battle was not merely a way to victory; it was the only way. A man—a super-man—had to pay for the world’s salvation with his life. This is the height of the Avengers storyline. It is also the height of the gospel.
Resurrection: The Un-Vanishing
We lost a few of our favorites in Endgame (some we might see again, but others seem officially gone). But we got back a lot more. Infinity War left us with the brutal erasure of half of all life in the universe—trillions of beings vanished. No class or kind were spared. Endgame culminates with the return of that which was lost. Even for the powers of pop culture, death is not the end.
Interestingly, Endgame doesn’t just end with resurrection; it opens with it—not a resurrection of the masses, but of Tony Stark. Lost in space, we see Iron Man record a final message for Pepper, then fade away into… near-death? Out of that hopelessness, he is raised and given a new chance at life thanks to the arrival of Captain Marvel. We also see resurrection of relationships and the thought-to-be-dead (especially between Antman and his daughter, and Quill and a back-to-the-future Gamora). But the point of the whole story is the resurrection of all, which reverses Thanos’ rapturous snap (the “Snapture”) with a death-defying return of the armies of good, just in time for the battle for the fate of the world.
Christianity isn’t the only religion in human history to proclaim resurrection, but most other ancient faiths of Greece and the Near East only assigned back-to-life mooments to a select few gods. As in Endgame, however, the Abrahamic faiths hold the resurrection of the dead—multitudes upon multitudes—as a core tenet. Avengers’ un-vanishing, as I’ll call it, doesn’t give us an eternal-life model for resurrection living, but it does present a holistic view that raises to life all that was unjustly killed.
Paradise
As in the Bible, Eden only makes a brief appearance in Endgame. In a perhaps unexpected twist, the remaining Avengers go to the place Nebula knows Thanos will be after his deadly work is done: a place she calls “the garden.” Talk about Genesis language! And, sure enough, we see Thanos, titan of war, with his armor removed, his weapons abandoned for a life of farming in an ecological wonderland, and sitting alone in a meager house at the center of paradise. The scene is short and doesn’t end prettily, not unlike the Garden of Genesis 3, but it’s fascinating that Thanos’ vision of the perfect world is so similar to a Christian vision of Eden. Lush vegetation. Waterfalls. Simplicity. Fruiting fields. And, chiefly, peace… until that peace is destroyed.
Perhaps Tony Stark, too, finds his own paradise—a sort of secular heaven—upon his death, as Pepper comforts him, “Tony, we’ll be okay. You can rest now.” It seems everyone, both good and evil, has the same vision of paradise—and it looks like rest.
Predestination
Thanos calls himself “inevitable.” When he probes Nebula’s memory files, he sees his own impending doom and resigns himself to it as the necessary price of destiny. When the Hulk knows he’s the only one who can handle the power of the Infinity Stones, he somberly acknowledges, “It’s like I was made for this.” Tony Stark says he had “a vision” about the destruction that came to pass in the Infinity War. And, after Dr. Strange prophesied a 1-in-14 million chance of success, well, that’s what we get.
This is Hollywood, of course, so everything is preordained. We knew the outcome of Endgame as soon as we saw the killer climax of Infinity War, but so many questions linger in my mind. Did Dr. Strange know what would happen, or only what could happen? If Thanos was himself inevitable, was his demise inevitable as well? Was Steve Rogers predestined to return to his love and live out the rest of his days with her, handing over the Captain America gauntlet? I suppose the questions of foreordination in a world of superheroes is not as tricky as in reality, but it’s tricky nonetheless. Basically, did the Avengers have to win? Did the universe have to be saved? I know they did for the sake of the story, but did they for the sake of truth? Avengers seems bent on the reality of destiny, purpose, and identity (Thor’s identity reformation at the end of Endgame is a blog post all its own!). Are we?
Redemption
There’s too much to say about redemption in Endgame. Lives, relationships, worlds, the universe, and history itself all find redemption—sometimes even in death. Nebula’s redemption, going from one of the most conflicted characters in the series to one of the most beautifully essential, smacks of a dozen Sunday school stories. But Hawkeye’s redemption stands out to me as one of the most biblical. He has gone rogue, betraying the Avenging order, but is ultimately reclaimed. It reminds of Jesus’ words to Peter, just before his betrayal: “But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” That’s exactly Hawkeye’s story, from righteous to dirty and back to righteous again, saving the Infinity Stones and returning to his family, both his Avengers family and his blood family. The story resonates so deeply because it is our story. Everyone everywhere stands in need of redemption.
I don’t think Hollywood had the intention here of preaching. And, if they did, there were plenty of slip-ups and misrepresentations. But even if Endgame isn’t a retelling of the gospel—and it isn’t—it is definitely an important conversation-starter for so many fundamentals of faith.
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