[WARNING] SPOILERS AHEAD

When I strolled into my new media class the day after the first midnight showing of “Avengers: Endgame,” I heard nothing but chatter about this movie. I remember taking a poll of the three or four people who had seen it asking for their score out of ten. I gathered that the general consensus was tens across the board. When asked their score in comparison to “Avengers: Infinity War,” I was shocked to hear that Endgame would remain a ten, while Infinity War, the supposed peak of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), would be moved down to a nine making my plans to see the film Saturday night with my boyfriend that much more thrilling.

As the theater went dark, the screen faded into Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, teaching his daughter, Lila, to shoot a bow and arrow in a field alongside his wife and two sons. While turning around for a split second, the infamous snap heard around the world decimates his family to ashes before fading into the title card kickstarting the beginning of the end to an era for the MCU.

Though the movie spanned a hefty three hours, the amount of action and rich narrative packed into the film made the daunting timespan nonexistent. The film is split into two parts, three weeks post-snap and five years later after the second failed attempt at stopping the Mad Titan. Using a time jump was a big risk but was one that was executed well, really being able to shine a light on a world still far from recovering and coping with the harsh reality that was forced on it. This also gave an opportunity to showcase how this reality gravely affected the six original Avengers (Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye and Black Widow) and how these changed versions of themselves responded to crisis alongside a crop of new heroes.

After another two hours of laughing, crying and overall being shook to my core, I came to the conclusion that while the concept of time travel is drastically overdone in film, the film’s directors and producers fit it into the story in a contextually seamless way. Rather than trying to undo Thanos’ snap, the Avengers recognize people have lived and while not entirely moved on with their lives, built relationships that they don’t want to just erase. This makes the plan to execute time travel a bit more interesting so that while being pivotal in the mission in bringing back everyone lost, the preservation of current life alongside that is just as important.

By the time the movie was coming to an end, I knew something big was coming. The final fight scene was a battle just as, if not more intense than that of the final events in Infinity War, before coming to an intense and emotional, then all at once soft ending, which tied the era of the Avengers up with an ornate and intricately crafted bow. All I can add is I left the theater asking myself and googling for hours, what’s next for the Marvel Cinematic Universe?