10 Most Nonsensical Plot Holes In The MCU

8. Rhodey And The Magic Battlesuit

LOKI TV
Marvel Studios

In Avengers: Endgame, Thanos’ missiles destroy the Avengers' base and Rocket, War Machine and Hulk are buried together, only Hulk’s raw power preventing a whole huge section of the building from collapsing on them. Jim Rhodes - a paraplegic who relies on technology to move below the waist - is trapped inside the non-functional War Machine armour.

Desperately calling out the emergency command (“canopy! canopy!”) , his armour opens like a hi-tech mummy’s tomb, freeing him to crawl to Rocket and lever him out of the wreckage. However, water is cascading in, and Hulk can't hold the building up forever.

When we next cut to them, Rhodes, Hulk and Rocket are trapped between the rubble and the rapidly rising water, with only inches to go. Rhodes' armour is long gone. Busted anyway, it's now exposed and under at least twelve feet of water. With no help coming, he resigns himself to his fate and says goodbye to his buddy.

Just as all hope seems lost, all of the restored heroes arrive to face off against Thanos and his army - and as Ant-Man rescues his trapped friends, powering up to Giant-Man size to bust them all out, emerging from his opening hand we see Hulk, Rocket and... hang on, is that War Machine?

What happened to his armour being futzed? How did he reclaim it from under tons of rushing, rising water with no legs and no assistance? This isn’t Stark’s nanotechnology: the War Machine armour is a good old-fashioned clunky mech-suit.

It wouldn't matter so much if their jeopardy hadn't been created by Rhodes being forced to abandon his broken-down armour: as War Machine, he could have freed Rocket and himself in seconds and left Hulk to smash his way out...

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Contributor

Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.