Dark Hawkeye
Endgame opens with a flashback to the Snap, when Clint Barton’s happy picnic with his family ends in tragedy as his wife and kids are turned to dust. This is a gut-wrenching sequence, even if most fans guessed that it would happen, but we weren’t expecting the character to go quite so dark from hereon in.
Judging by the trailers, it seemed that Clint’s angsty grieving process led him to get a snazzy new hairdo and that was that. In reality, though, it seems as if he took to watching a lot of Netflix after he became a bachelor again and decided to take a page out of the Punisher’s book. When Black Widow catches up with Barton five years later, we discover that he’s been murdering his way through the international criminal underworld.
This was a pretty grim turn for one of the original Avengers to take, but I suppose none of them have ever had a rigid no-killing code like some superheroes. Still, it was surprising that Clint’s murderous actions went un-erased by the end of the movie, meaning he’ll have to work through his guilt and what he’s done.
Thanos’ Early Death
After a lot of build-up, Avengers: Infinity War made it clear that, yes, Thanos really is the most formidable foe our heroes have ever faced. No matter what they threw at the Mad Titan, he was able to survive. It came as a shock, then, when the Avengers were able to turn the tables on the villain so quickly into Endgame.
It doesn’t take long before the Avengers, along with the help of Captain Marvel and Nebula, are able to locate Thanos’ position: in his retirement farm on some backwater planet labelled Titan II. As Thanos has been gravely injured by his use of the Infinity Gauntlet, first on half the universe and then to destroy the Stones themselves, it’s not too difficult to get the best of him. Then, in a fit of anger, Thor does what he should have done in IW and goes for the head, slicing Thanos’ cranium clean off.
We were expecting Josh Brolin’s antagonist to play a major role in Endgame, so this left us wondering just who was going to cause the Avengers grief for the next 2.5 hours. Of course, Thanos later returned via time travel, but this unceremonious offing of the big bad certainly startled us on first viewing.