Avengers: Endgame - Every Mystery The Russos Have Answered (So Far)

7. Why Five Years?

The Question

It's a simple enough question - why did the Russos settle on a time jump of five years after Thanos is killed?

The Answer

For the Russos, they needed to show enough time had passed that the world had moved on - or was trying its best to - while also making it long enough that it was even more tragic that the people still haunted by the Decimation couldn't fully move on.

"We wanted to pick a time that was long enough to force everybody to move on. You could no longer be clinging to what we should have done, how we should have done it differently. Maybe we could go back and stop this. We wanted everybody to go through a life cycle where they had to commit to an existence where this was their new reality. Five years seemed like the right amount of time for that."

Essentially, they wanted to press ahead far enough that there was no hope left, that people would have moved on with their lives - or tried to build something out of the ashes - and also for enough time to have passed for someone like Hawkeye's wounds being so raw to be even more upsetting.