Avengers: Endgame - 13 Best Callbacks To The MCU
Part of the journey is the end...
At long last, Avengers: Endgame is in cinemas around the world and judging from the box office receipts, everyone you've ever met has either already seen it or is seeing it as we speak.
The film is a genuine delight, providing an emotional, rousing, and downright cathartic conclusion to the MCU's Infinity Saga with charisma and heart to spare. But one of the most endearing aspects of the entire film is in how it subtly uses poetic rhyming schemes to echo moments from earlier films in the franchise, resulting in some truly affecting and unexpected callbacks that are so much more than mere fan service.
Whether its recontextualizing lines of dialogue, using a similar sequence to set up expectations only to subvert them, or even simply using echoes from the past to bring a character's arc full circle, Endgame has a ton of great callbacks to other MCU films. Here are the absolute best of them...
*SPOILER WARNING: OBVIOUSLY. IF YOU HAPPEN TO BE ONE OF THE TWELVE PEOPLE WHO HAVEN'T SEEN IT THIS WEEKEND, YOU'VE BEEN WARNED*
13. The Cave
The fact that Tony Stark's arc in the film begins with him stranded in space with low resources, little-to-no chance of survival, while wearing a tank top through which we can see his arc reactor is a direct callback to the beginning of his first ever arc in the MCU: when he was in the cave in the very first Iron Man.
There, Tony was held hostage by terrorists in a cave and had to escape using only his brains and cunning. In doing so, he builds his first ever Iron Man suit and escapes successfully. He does so with the help of his one and only friend in the cave, Ho Yinsen.
In Endgame, things are a little more complicated. Nebula more-than-fills the Ho Yinsen role as Tony's only assistance, but even when they put their brains together they remain unable to find a solution, merely prolonging their lives rather than saving themselves.
It's a fun callback and subsequent subversion when Tony and Nebula are ultimately saved thanks to the combined efforts of Captain Marvel and Pepper Potts.