Characters In Avengers: Endgame With More Meaning Than You Realized

Endgame sees the surprising return of the charismatic Frank Grillo as Brock Rumlow, aka Crossbones, in a new scene meant to take place just moments after the conclusion of The Avengers' Battle of New York. (This is supposedly before they all break to go and get shawarma.) 

At the point that he shows up, Grillo is still a couple years away from doing a full heel turn and exposing himself as a HYDRA lackey, still sporting his pretty face before the events of The Winter Soldier left him as a burned-up, vengeful supervillain. While he was talked up as a main antagonist of the third Captain America movie, his fate there was mostly to be used as a misplaced hand grenade for Scarlet Witch.

Amusingly, Frank Grillo was among the first of Endgame's actors to all but confirm — whether he meant to or not — that the Avengers would be travelling through time to revisit older movies in Endgame, something that had been heavily implied but never spoken of by an actor who was actually there. He referred to his scenes as a flashback, but coupled with the set photos that had been circulating of the heroes revisiting the Battle of New York, fans put two-and-two together pretty quickly. 

As he said on the UFC Unfiltered podcast, "I'm allowed to say whatever I want because I'm never doing another Marvel movie." After presumably being yelled at, Grillo then walked back his comments a few days later.

While Iron Man's daughter may be an invention of the movies, Scott Lang's daughter is anything but. Scott meets up with Cassie after a five-year time jump that, at the end of Endgame, appears to be permanent. In the meantime, his precocious daughter has grown up almost more than he can believe — but if the comics are any indication of where her story's going, she still has a lot of development to go.

In Marvel Comics, Cassie follows in her father's footsteps in messing with the world of Pym particles to give herself radical size-changing powers, teaming up with her dad under the names of Stature and Stinger. At times, she's as much of a partner to him as the movies' second Wasp is — and that's a relationship we may get to see develop on screen as the movies continue.

While Endgame does in many ways feel like a rare conclusive chapter in the MCU, producer Kevin Feige has said that groundwork is being laid for characters like Cassie to eventually suit up as superheroes themselves. Speaking to Heroic Hollywood around the time of Ant-Man and the Wasp's release in 2018, Feige said, "Taking our cue from the comics as we always do — that's why we wanted Cassie, a very young Cassie in this movie, to be inspired by her father. Just planting seeds."

With not one, but two opposed versions of herself running around, one angling toward heroism with another staying full-tilt evil, Thanos' daughter Nebula gets a lot to do in Endgame — which is only fitting, considering the character's comic book history. 

In the Infinity Gauntlet comic story on which both Infinity War and Endgame are based — quite loosely based, in the case of Endgame — Nebula plays a pivotal role in how the conflict against Thanos plays out. In those comics, she actually helps to defeat Thanos by wielding the Infinity Gauntlet herself, getting some well-deserved revenge against her sadistic father after years of physical and emotional torture. And the story doesn't end there — after getting hold of the Gauntlet, Nebula promptly loses control, unexpectedly becoming the story arc's final boss.

That doesn't really play out in Endgame, and with Thanos sitting sadly dusted and the Infinity Stones being left destroyed in the MCU's prime timeline by the movie's conclusion, it doesn't look like a moment we'll ever get to see on screen. But it's nice to see the movies acknowledge how important Nebula was to the Infinity Gauntlet story with her expanded role in this second part of the adaptation. At least she got to show up, unlike some of the comic arc's more important characters — like, say, Adam Warlock. 

Due to a number of complicated, business-related reasons, the TV series of Marvel Television and the movies of Marvel Studios have never really been that closely-knit, despite technically existing under the same umbrella of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With a few exceptions, the two worlds have been kept very separate, with the only crossovers involving the movies affecting the TV shows, and never the other way around. (If you have any doubts about this, ask someone who's only watched the movies if they have any idea what an Inhuman is supposed to be.)

As the movie details, Edwin Jarvis is the butler of Howard Stark and the sidekick to Peggy Carter. While this is his first appearance in an MCU movie, he was an integral part of her series, Agent Carter. Edwin is also obviously the namesake of Tony's first A.I., J.A.R.V.I.S. — a.k.a., amusingly, Just a Rather Very Intelligent System — whose voice was subsumed into the Vision during the events of Age of Ultron. 

While Agent Carter may not have set the world on fire over the course of its two seasons, it did develop a devoted following, and it's not surprising that it's become the first TV show to cross over into the movies, years after its demise. Not only did Kevin Feige have more involvement with its development, it was created by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the credited co-writers of Endgame and Infinity War.

Marvel's Phase One wasn't that great at giving all of its characters important places in the story. Sure, Pepper Potts and Peggy Carter have ended up becoming integral figures to the larger MCU narrative, but Betty Ross, Jane Foster, and all of Jane's friends from the first two Thor movies? Not so much. 

As a result, Jane Foster's return to the MCU fold came as a surprise in Endgame, with the prevailing assumption among the fanbase being that Natalie Portman was kind of done with this Phantom Menace-level fantasy crap. Not so! She returns being intercepted by the future Avengers while on her reluctant vacation to Asgard during the events of Thor: The Dark World, presumably getting stabbed in the hindquarters by a dedicated Rocket Raccoon. She gets what seems like less than a minute of screentime, but hey, it was a cute moment. Shame she had to sit out on the only good Thor movie though.

In the comics, Jane Foster is far from shortchanged in Thor's story. Matter of fact, she actually becomes Thor for a lengthy period of time, which is a fun alternate universe to imagine for the MCU. Could it still happen in the movies? Well... maybe if people start asking for it. Based on the reaction to Thor: Ragnarok's new-and-improved fun Thor (as well as Endgame's further-improved fat Thor), it seems like we still need to have a couple more adventures with the OG Odinson before we start talking about who will wield the hammer next.

Now here's someone who could've come in handy in the fight against Thanos. In case you haven't seen Doctor Strange (or just plain forgot about it) the Ancient One is a character of minor significance but major power, preceding Stephen Strange as the Earth's Sorcerer Supreme. She shows up as the keeper of the Time Stone in Greenwich Village's Sanctum Sanctorum during the events of the Battle of New York, tracked down by Professor Hulk in the hopes of getting her to hand over her nice necklace.

In addition to revealing that Marvel's Sorcerers were indeed around to help out during the Chitauri invasion (at least in their neighborhood of New York City), Hulk's encounter with the Ancient One reveals that she has always known she would meet and be replaced by Stephen Strange, who at the time of the Battle of New York is still a practicing surgeon. Why she later claims in private conversation not to want to train him during the events of Doctor Strange is just one of many little nitpicky inconsistencies that Endgame's time travel story gives rise to, but considering how nice it was to see this character again, we can deal with a spare plot hole or two.

In true Super Smash Bros. fashion, everyone is here for the final battle of Avengers: Endgame — minus a Black Widow and a cool pink robot, give or take. But these absences are partially made up for by the surprise appearance of Pepper Potts suited up in her very own Iron Man-style armor, the blue raspberry design of which is foreshadowed by Endgame's first act. 

While she's certainly been in the thick of the action before in the MCU, the CEO of Stark Industries has never been as much of a player on the battlefield as she gets to be in Endgame. Pepper's arrival into the fray this time isn't some desperation move like the finale of Iron Man 3, which saw her vaporize foes with the help of laser gloves. Instead, she shows up in a full suit of armor, designed especially for her by Tony Stark.

In Endgame, Pepper shows up to the fight somewhat apropos of nothing. But she does have a history as a heroine in the comics, where she's known under the alias of Rescue. Since she shows up to Endgame's last fight with around 50,000 other fighters in tow, it's hard to see how that name makes sense in the movies. But it was still worth it to have her for that instantly-iconic back-to-back shot of husband and wife blasting away at Thanos' minions together, working as a team one last time before the end.