So. Many. Coincidences.
Sure, even the best movies have some key moments that rely on big coincidences that you just have to accept, but it seems like there are quite a few in Endgame, and here’s just a small selection.
A) How did Captain Marvel find Tony and Nebula stranded in space? We get that Carol Danvers is a cosmic hero who helps folks out when they’re in need, but the odds of her happening upon these dying Avengers at the exact right moment are pretty incredible.
B) How do all of the heroes survive Thanos’ attack on Avengers HQ? When he arrives in 2014, the Mad Titan launches a full-scale attack on the Avengers’ compound, completely leveling it to the ground. Miraculously, though, none of the characters inside are killed or even gravely injured. This makes sense for the super-humans among them, but those regular folks like Ant-Man or Hawkeye got very lucky.
C) Is that rat the real hero of Avengers: Endgame? Ant-Man only escapes the Quantum Realm because a rat crawls across the controls in his long-forgotten van. If Scott hadn’t got out, the heroes wouldn’t have had the idea to time travel and therefore never have saved the day. So, basically, this rat is the greatest Avenger the world’s ever had and the universe owes it a real debt. Presumably, the rat’s involvement is why the good guys only won 1 timeline out of 14 billion.
Why Didn’t They Go To Different Time Periods To Collect The Stones?
Once they’ve figured out how to time travel, the Avengers spend some time working out the best periods to visit to collect the six Infinity Stones. They settle on four points in time: New York 2012 for the Time, Space and Mind Stone, Vormir in the recent past for the Soul Stone, Asgard 2013 for the Reality Stone and Morag 2014 for the Power Stone.
From a plot point of view, these all make sense. Revisiting Thor: The Dark World allows Thor to have a heartfelt reunion with his mother, going back to The Avengers brings things full circle and dipping in to the events of Guardians of the Galaxy means the plot thickens when 2014 Thanos gets involved. However, from the characters’ perspective, these are terrible choices that make things infinitely harder for themselves.
Iron Man and Ant-Man fail to pick up the Tesseract from 2012 – which is fair enough because this is a complicated time to steal it. So why didn’t they go with Thor to Asgard in 2013, where it’s safely locked in Odin’s vaults? It surely would have been a cinch to swipe it from there, right?
As Nebula tells War Machine when they arrive on Morag, lots of folks are after the Power Stone in 2014. So, why didn’t she or Rocket suggest visiting Xandar later the same year, after the Guardians had returned it to the Nova Corps? A quick chat with Glenn Close and they could have been home in time for tea without any Thanos-related hassle.