The last movie of Marvel's Phase 3--and the final one we knew specific details about--is out now in theaters in the form of Spider-Man: Far From Home. Despite being another movie dedicated to the life of Peter Parker, it also has to deal with the ramifications of Avengers: Endgame on the world. That includes explaining one of its biggest moments. Here's how things played out.
It's no secret that Avengers: Endgame left some pretty major questions unanswered as we headed into Spider-Man: Far From Home--and no, we don't mean questions like, "Wait, so is Captain America just a huge selfish jerk? Or did he kiss his own niece?" We mean questions like, "So what actually happened when Bruce 'reversed' Thanos' snap?"
Though, seriously, did Captain America kiss his own niece? Will we ever get an answer for that?
Anyway--the lingering questions about the MCU's worldbuilding and shared universe were largely swept away or skirted around during Endgame proper. We're only given very, very brief looks at the devastation the snap caused through a handful of establishing shots which show an almost post-apocalyptic New York City and San Francisco. We never actually see anyone come back from being dusted--they all swoop in from magic portals during the fight. What actually happened to the world at large when half of the population suddenly rematerialized is left completely up to our imaginations.
Until now, that is. Spider-Man: Far From Home may not be as dire or as serious as Endgame, but as the final chapter of Phase 3, it was put in the unique position to try and pick up some of Endgame's pieces--sort of, at least. It does address some of the topics we've been wondering about, and below we dive into its explanation regarding the Reverse Snap.
Spider-Man: Far From Home spoilers from here on out! For more, check out our look at what we know about Phase 4 of the MCU, which remains very mysterious.
Snap no more
We may be calling it the "Reverse Snap" here in the real world, but the characters themselves know it as "the Blip." As in, people weren't "snapped away," they "blipped," and so forth. It sounds silly, sure, but it actually does make some sense. After all, the only people who knew it was a snapping hand-motion that caused everything would be the Avengers who were there on the scene when it happened. And, technically, the snap itself was really just a meme--after all, nothing about the Infinity Gauntlet suggests that a snap is required to activate all the stones, Thanos was just being dramatic and it stuck in everyone's heads. Ergo, "the Blip" for everyone who isn't us, the viewers, or the Avengers themselves.
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- What does Far From Home tell us about Phase 4?
- What does that surprise cameo mean for the MCU?
- So, does the MCU have a multiverse or not?
What happened after the Reverse Snap?
We get a first-hand look at what, exactly, happened the moment Bruce undid the Blip, thanks to someone's cell phone video of a high school basketball game. The players are in the middle of their game when, suddenly, members of the marching band re-materialize mid-song in the middle of the court, causing all sorts of wacky chaos. It's funny, here at this moment, but what we can assume from this scene is actually pretty bleak--everyone who vanished in the snap was returned exactly to the place they vanished from, no matter what.
So, people who vanished from say, cruise ships or boats in the middle of the ocean? They'd just be dropped into the water to drown since, obviously, no boat would be there for them to stand on five years later. People who vanished from planes would be falling out of the sky. People who vanished from hospitals say, mid-surgery, would be--well, let's just say extremely worse for wear when they reappeared.
Far From Home naturally doesn't touch on any of that--but it does deal with some of the less-fun fallout by explaining that May rematerialized into her apartment, only to find that another family had started living there in her absence, leaving both her and Peter effectively homeless. They weren't alone in that particular situation and it actually inspired May to start up a humanitarian effort to help people with similar experiences in the post-Blip world.
But beyond May's work to help homeless Blip-victims, the world seems to have picked up the pieces shockingly quickly and with little to no trouble at all. After all, less than a year after rematerializing and destroying Thanos for good, Peter's high school is ready to take a European vacation. There are a handful of gags about how underclassmen who weren't blipped are now in their grade or older than them, but beyond that? Everything seems to be business as usual. Even the cities themselves don't seem to be all that bad off, even after we saw the garbage-strewn post-apocalyptic ghost towns they'd become. Apparently, the world's infrastructure was able to bounce back so fast that the world is just normal again, right off the bat.
What about the deaths?
People returning from the dust is only half the equation of a post-Endgame world--we also have to deal with the fact that the Avengers themselves are now no longer a thing. Sort of. Some people died, others didn't but still decided to retire and/or ruin the past because they were bored, we guess. Either way, the landscape is pretty dramatically changed, at least for the heroes themselves.
Far From Home confirms that civilians definitely know everyone died, or is otherwise gone, but never actually digs into just how or why. The movie opens with an (admittedly very funny) "video tribute" to the fallen heroes including Cap, Black Widow, and Vision, but the world itself seems to be populated exclusively by tributes to Tony. So, despite it being obvious that people somehow know that it wasn't just Iron Man who died, not many people seem to care about much else.
This also begs the question: How, exactly, do people know? It's not like anyone was actually there to witness the final fight, Natasha died on an alien planet, Vision died in the middle of Wakanda, Steve didn't die at all (unless he's since died of old age, we guess). Did someone put together a press release or something to make sure the public was clued in? What was that process like? How did they explain what happened to a population of people who just underwent what is, undoubtedly, the most shocking and traumatic experience of their lives on a global scale?
Apparently, whatever they did worked like a charm. Because while people are definitely scared that Iron Man is no longer around, they don't seem that thrown off by anything else. In fact, it seems to basically be business as usual for just about everyone and everything, though doubtlessly, we'll continue to see some of the fallout unfold in slow motion as Phase 4 really gets rolling.
