“The Ancient One is supposed to be an Oriental guy.”
“Scarlet Witch is supposed to be way more powerful.”
“Aunt May is supposed to be old.”
“The Mandarin is supposed to be cool.”
“Bucky was supposed to be a kid.”
“Captain Marvel is supposed to be different.”
Marvel fans complain about these sorts of things, and I agree with some of them. But in Avengers: Endgame, a smart lady said, “We all fail at who we’re supposed to be. The mark of a hero is how we handle being who we are.”
Unpopular opinion: Endgame was very disappointing. There’s no way it could have lived up to all the hype, but even adjusting my expectations, it was ultimately meh. There were parts I liked, though. For example, the moral.
A few characters didn’t live out the role they were supposed to be in the movie. I can’t tell you who, because Thanos Still Demands Your Silence. But I can talk about why the moral is important.
God made people to be in community with him. As we’re created in His image, we’re supposed to be good, loving, faithful, etc. But we fail at that. A lot. We miss the mark, and even if God isn’t mad, He’s disappointed. We need the salvation and forgiveness of Jesus to repair the relationship.
But even when we’re forgiven, we still fail at who we’re supposed to be. The wonderful thing is God loved us with his pure and powerful love before we were born, before we failed, and before we were forgiven, and he still loves us through all our failures.
God loves who we are as well as who we’re supposed to be. And there’s still a chance we can become who we’re supposed to be. All our gifts and talents and dreams are glimpses of that ideal person God created inside us. As we try to bring that person to the surface, we can be just as heroic as the Avengers.
But not the version of them we got in Endgame. Again, those are the ones who’ve already failed, and they’re pretty meh.
The more I think about Endgame, the lower it gets on my MCU ranking list (which I’m still working on). Here’s hoping I don’t get flamed for daring to dislike it.
The Correlation 