Here's Why These Avengers: Endgame Moments Upset Fans

Avengers: Endgame has racked up some incredible box office numbers since making its highly anticipated theatrical debut, but that doesn't mean the movie left every corner of the massive Marvel fanbase completely satisfied. It's easy to understand why: The film serves as the end of an era, concluding arcs for characters that fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have come to know and love over the course of more than a decade. Now we're not entirely sure what's in store for the superheroes who prevailed, with Marvel keeping mum on what the next big thing in the MCU is going to be — and some moviegoers don't even know if they really liked the way the Infinity Saga ended. In the wake of Endgame, MCU fandom is experiencing its very own civil war.

Although Endgame has blown up the box office and earned widespread critical acclaim, plenty of fans are still upset — over plot holes, seemingly out-of-character moments, and jokes that, for some, marred what was supposed to be a satisfying end to a story 22 films in the making. In a three-hour film there's plenty of room for controversy — here's a look at the Avengers: Endgame moments that left fans most upset.

Endgame's fight scenes are epic and awesome. Captain America swinging around Mjolnir? Captain Marvel unflinchingly taking a headbutt from Thanos? Valkyrie, Scarlet Witch, Shuri, and Nebula coming together to protect little Peter Parker from Thanos? All moments that made Marvel fans want to stand up and cheer.

Well... maybe not so much. The latter scene, a so-called "girl power" moment, has been called empowering by some and pandering by others. When these powerful women of the MCU showed off their might, some fans felt that the team-up was a forced political statement, while still others got goosebumps. The screenwriters apparently anticipated that there would be a divided reaction to the scene, too: In an interview with the New York Times, writer Stephen McFeely admitted, "There was much conversation. Is that delightful or is it pandering? We went around and around on that. Ultimately we went, 'We like it too much.'"

Marvel took its sweet time with making a female-fronted superhero film, so maybe this was one attempt to make up for the MCU's shortcomings when it comes to giving screen time to its superpowered ladies. Endgame has also weathered criticism for the measly screentime given to fan favorite Okoye, who was originally excluded from the film's posters.

Marvel had tremendous success with Black Panther, the first black-led superhero movie, and Captain Marvel, the MCU's first female-led film. Important first steps toward inclusion, the films were both financial and critical hits. Considering this record, it's about time for an LGBT superhero, right?

Endgame debuted the MCU's very first canonically gay character, something you may have missed if you blinked. Played by co-director Joe Russo, the unnamed man talked about a disastrous date in a group therapy session led by Steve Rogers. In an interview with Deadline, Russo talked about the importance of representation, saying, "It was important to us as we did four of these films, we wanted a gay character somewhere in them. We felt it was important that one of us play him, to ensure the integrity and show it is so important to the filmmakers that one of us is representing that."

Some people reacted to this minuscule moment with scorn, however. An itty bitty cameo hyped up by big headlines wasn't a satisfying first appearance of a gay character, especially when some fans expected a named character like Valkyrie or even Captain Marvel to come out. The inclusion of a few moments of LGBT representation on screen only served to remind audiences that there is little to no LGBT representation in the MCU to begin with.

Time travel in the movies has never been an exact science, and no matter how closely you investigate a movie's details, it's almost impossible to really understand it fully. Ant-Man returns from the Quantum Realm just in time to help the Avengers get so itty bitty that they go backward in time... because science. With us so far? The "time heist" in Endgame has the Avengers pairing off as they travel back in time to the various moments in MCU history when they knew exactly where to locate the Infinity Stones. In order to prevent the creation of a zillion alternate timelines, they have to then return the Stones to the precise moment they were taken.

Like most things, this is easier said than done. Steve Rogers is the man for the job, jumping from 2023 to 2014, 2012, and the '40s, where he then decides to stay and get a life. Somehow, this doesn't cause an alternate timeline despite breaking the rules that were set out by the film: if you travel to the past, that past becomes your future. The present and future can't be changed. Are there multiple Peggys to now match the multiple Steves? Where did he get that shield, so shiny and new after Thanos snapped it in two? It's kind of disappointing that Endgame went through so much trouble to lay out the rules of time travel, only to seemingly throw them away in the final act.

One of the most important scenes in Infinity War showed the Hulk, previously undefeated, getting his green butt handed to him by Thanos' purple fist. After that throwdown, Hulk refused to come out and help in the fight against the Mad Titan. We didn't know it then, but the Hulk getting flung into space by Heimdall was the last time we'd see the big green guy as we'd come to know him.

In Endgame, Banner and the Hulk have fused into a being with Banner's personality and brains and the Hulk's body and brawn — dubbed "Professor Hulk" by fans of the comics who were familiar with a similar iteration of the character. Those who'd come to love his grunts and fits of destruction were disappointed to find that with Banner in charge, there would be no more smashing big monsters. The conflict between Banner and the Hulk was essentially resolved offscreen. Sure, it was cool to see Professor Hulk dab — and there's no discounting the fact that it was Hulk's gamma-infused body that ended up bearing the brunt of the Infinity Stones' power when he undid Thanos' snap — but fans were disappointed that a character had essentially been erased. A secret death of the film, in a sense. RIP Hulk.

Since 2008 we've been trained to dig into the very last crumbs of our popcorn and suck fruitlessly at our empty sodas when the credits roll on an MCU movie. We get comfortable because we know that there's one final tidbit waiting for us, like an after dinner mint. End credits scenes give us a glimpse of what's next or just a fun bonus scene that feels like an inside joke. It's a classic part of the Marvel movie experience.

All of which is why a number of fans felt betrayed when the credits rolled, kept rolling, and faded to black on Avengers: Endgame. Although audiences were willing to keep waiting, there was originally no end credits scene, just a clanging sound that seems to serve as a subtle audio callback to Iron Man, the movie that started it all. Fitting as this may have been, outrage over the absence of any indication of what's next is perhaps what prompted Marvel to add the second trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home as the end credits scene in later screenings. As good as Endgame is, it was never going to satisfy everyone — and a black screen was not what some fans wanted from the end of an era.