Avengers: Endgame is one of the most comic book-y comic book movies of all time, and though it lifted plenty of its moments straight from the comics, it also diverged from them in quite a few places. Fates are resolved in a manner that differs drastically to how they were concluded in Marvel's books, while teases for future MCU films plot a future without precedent from the source material.
It's truly an exciting time to be a Marvel fan, and while it's great to point out the many occasions where Endgame mirrored the comics, it's also interesting to consider the differences between them. The fourth Avengers film takes inspiration from a myriad of different books (the list of acknowledgements in the credits should imply as much), and so there are plenty of changes that were made to established storylines in the film.
Nowhere is this more prevalent than in Endgame's many endings. It doesn't suffer from Return of the King syndrome, but it does end up resolving the arcs of several characters and tees-up the future of the franchise to boot.
The MCU continues to carve its own destiny, but here's how things could've gone down if they'd stuck closer to the material...
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
