Avengers: Infinity War Needs To Be Watched As A Season Finale

Season 1, Episode 19.

Infinity War Season Finale
Marvel Studios

Avengers: Infinity War is out, and brings together 10 years' worth of characters and plotlines from across 18 different movies.

While on the one hand you could try and wave this away as being 'just another movie', it's also a cinematic feat of the kind that's never really been attempted. While this isn't the first big team-up event or long-running saga, the sheer amount of heroes brought in here and how many previous movies it draws upon is really quite unprecedented in film.

And in that regard, Avengers: Infinity War - and thus the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe - is more like a TV show.

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We live in a time where not only is the small screen becoming increasingly cinematic, but showrunners and network executives are obsessed with the idea of creating serialised stories that aren't TV at all, but films. We've repeatedly heard how Game of Thrones is a "73-hour movie", while Twin Peaks: The Return was listed in Sight & Sound's Top 10 Films of 2017. So there's a delicious irony, then, in cinema's biggest, most cash-grabbing franchise actually reversing that trend with Infinity War.

While the movie is playing to as broad an audience as possible, and does have some self-contained elements that will work regardless - especially when it comes to Thanos' character and motivations - it's undoubtedly a movie that not only massively rewards prior investment in the MCU, but assumes such knowledge for the most part. This has prompted some criticism, such as this viral New Yorker review:

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That's not entirely wrong, although again it can be argued there's enough in there for a newcomer to find enjoyment, but there's also no reason it shouldn't be the case. You wouldn't walk into the third movie of a trilogy, for example, without seeing - or at least having some insight into - the first two instalments, and Infinity War is that on a much bigger scale.

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It doesn't need to spend too much time developing its characters, because that's what the previous 18 movies have done, while building the storyline to this climactic event too, and it's that which makes Infinity War more like a season finale than it is a single movie event.

Think about something like Game of Thrones, which typically spends eight hours of a season in gradually building things up, moving its pieces around the board, and then blowing it all to hell in the last couple of episodes. A season finale is a tricky thing to get right, because it has to bring numerous storylines to a natural conclusion, while leaving enough up in the air to make viewers desperately want to return for the next season. It's what makes something like The Winds of Winter, or Breaking Bad's fourth season finale Face-Off, such incredible and deeply satisfying episodes of television.

Infinity War does that but with well over 30 hours of setup, and it's unfair to expect Marvel to cater too much for those who haven't invested in their cinematic universe before now. You could argue that any film should be able to stand on its own two feet, and Infinity War does to an extent anyway, but also it's been clear for years now that Marvel's is a deeply connected universe where crossovers can and do happen, and events from previous movies will have repercussions in the future ones. Watching characters like Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America in this movie, we understand every decision they make and action they perform precisely because of just how much development has been done with them.

This is a movie all about payoff on the character journeys and plot foreshadowing from the past 10 years, and many viewers will already know everything they need to about the on-screen heroes, Infinity Stones, and so on. If you go into it as a standalone movie, then sure, you might be a little confused or disappointed. But then it's probably fair to say that's the wrong way to approach this.

If you go into it as the finale of a mammoth season of television - albeit one with billions of dollars behind it - then you should find it a much richer experience that delivers a satisfyingly explosive and emotional endpoint.

What did you think of Infinity War? Let us know down in the comments.

Read Next: How Avengers: Infinity War Completely Changes The MCU

Contributor
Contributor

NCTJ-qualified journalist. Most definitely not a racing driver. Drink too much tea; eat too much peanut butter; watch too much TV. Sadly only the latter paying off so far. A mix of wise-old man in a young man's body with a child-like wonder about him and a great otherworldly sensibility.