Avengers: Endgame - What Happened To The Dead Heroes?

1. How The Avengers Bring Back The Fallen... On Their Second Attempt

One probably wouldn't have predicted that Ant-Man and the Wasp would become somewhat essential viewing prior to Endgame, but it very much is. That film sees Scott Lang, Hank Pym and Hope van Dyne enter the Quantum Realm in order to rescue the missing Janet van Dyne, and it ends with Scott stuck in the realm after the rest are dusted in the decimation.

Very fortunately, Scott manages to escape from the Quantum Realm after a rat crawls over the dial controlling the device in his minivan. Five years on from the snap, and Ant-Man hasn't aged a day, all thanks to the temporal qualities of the dimension in question.

Hatching a plan, Steve Rogers and Nat Romanoff enlist the help of Bruce Banner and Tony Stark to perform what Lang refers to as a 'time heist'. Recruiting a new team, the Avengers perfect time-travel and head back to different points in the MCU's history to retrieve the Infinity Stones before Thanos can get his hands on them. They're successful, but it comes at a great cost, with Black Widow sacrificing herself on Vormir in order to retrieve the Soul Stone.

After an unusually brief period of reflection, Stark and Banner fashion a new Gauntlet and channel the stones into it. Banner, having married his own personality with that of the Hulk's, decides that he should be the one to use it, with no one else on the team strong enough to withstand its power.

Then, with one snap, the Fallen return. Bruce injures his arm in the process, and a battle with a time-travelling Thanos of yesteryear ensues, but all those who perished half a decade earlier are restored, as though they hadn't aged a day. They all get to have their own moment in the spotlight keeping the new gauntlet out of Thanos' reach, and though there is a sense of the inevitable to it all, they all manage to make one heck of an entrance.