Ahhhh! The Horrible, Heteronormative, Offensive, Disgusting, No-Good End of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a huge series of movies starring Marvel superheroes, who all know each other, interact with each other, and refer to events and situations from previous movies, so you have to watch all of them in order to understand what the heck is going on.  Every origin-story movie involves a superhero meeting, losing, and winning his True Love.

1. Iron-Man, aka Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), head of the giant corporation that provides technological stuff, falls in love with his former assistant Pepper.  They retire, move to a farm, and have a kid.

2. Captain America, aka Steve Rogers (Chris Evans, top photo), a World War II soldier turned into an Axis-fighting machine, falls in love with Peggy, one of the scientists working on him.  He's trapped in an iceberg for 70 years, leaving Peggy to grow old. But when he emerges, he still hangs out with her.  

3. Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) falls in love with Hope, daughter of the scientist who invented his shrinking suit. He has a daughter from another relationship, I think.

4. Hawkeye, aka Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner, left), retired from the superhero business to move to a farm, get married, and have some kids.

5. Peter Quill (Chris Pratt, below), leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy crime-fighting team, falls in love with his coworker Zamora.  

6. The Hulk, aka Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), had a True Love in one move, another in a second, and then fell in love with fellow superhero The Black Widow.

7. Superhero Scarlet Witch, aka Wanda Maximoff, fell in love with  the android Vision (Paul Bettany), but he was killed.

There are lots more, but I'm getting tired. 

After the origin story, the True Loves are barely mentioned, especially in the ensemble movies titled the Avengers.  But apparently they were always there, forming the basic motive for each superhero's life and work, and at the end of the movie series they come roaring back like the Second Coming of Christ.

An ongoing plot arc is an attempt to track down all of the Infinity Stones, like Tolkien's Rings of Power but much more powerful, because an evil demagogue named Thanos wants to use them to wipe out 50% of all sentient life in the universe (that's right, I said the universe).  The team tries to keep him from getting the stones, then tries to stop him, but in Avengers: Infinity War (2018), he succeeds.  Snap!  Half of the sentients in the universe crumble into dust, including a lot of superheroes and their True Loves, but never both.

Imagine the chaos!  We're so interconnected that civilization would definitely collapse.  But here the economies and governments of the world seem fine; survivors are traumatized, but they manage to put up memorials to their lost True Loves and go back to high school classes, museums, pop music, and restaurants. There's actually a scene in a group therapy session, where a guy talks about his first date since the Snap -- with another guy, making him the first and only identifiable gay person in any Marvel Universe movie.

In Avengers: End Game (2020), the surviving superheroes figure out how to go back in time and prevent Thanos from getting the Infinity Stones, thus bringing everyone back.  There are lots of tracking each other down and "we need to work together" scenes, and a long, long, loooo-ng battle.  The Snap is reversed, everyone returns, and the long, long, looo-ng batle continues, involving everyone who has ever appeared in any movie fighting with swords, monsters, and energy blasts. 

I fell asleep.  When I awoke, the battle was over, Thanos was dead, and about 20  superheroes are sitting by a lake, saying "I miss her" about True Loves who died before the Snap or during the battle (a slight exaggeration, but I did count five "I miss her" statements). 

But the movie isn't over: we have another 45 minutes depicting 2,000 other superheroes reuniting with their True Loves and setting up heterosexual nuclear families. Again and again and again!

Just when you think everyone is paired off or missing "her," Captain America has to go back in time to return the Infinity Stones to their proper place, so the whole thing doesn't happen again.  Except he comes back as an old man.  He explains that he decided to stay in 1947, reunite with his True Love, and live the next 80 years with her.  We close to the two in their 1940s Levittown tract house, dancing and gazing into each other's eyes.  

I get it; the sole purpose of being a superhero is to provide men and women with an opportunity to gaze into other's eyes forever.  This is the meaning of life, our sole reason for existing.  Gay people absolutely do not exist. Do you have to rub it in, over and over and over and over and over?

To be fair, Thor doesn't settle down on a farm with his True Love or miss Her.  He joins the Guardians of the Galaxy, fighting intergalactic crime with Peter Quill and Drax the Destroyer (both of whom miss Her).