Avengers: Endgame

Avengers: Endgame, 2019 American superhero action film featuring the Avengers, Marvel Comics’ premier superhero team. The film is the climactic culmination of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Infinity Saga storyline, which spanned 23 films across more than a decade (counting Spider-Man: Far from Home [2019] as an epilogue). Endgame follows the Avengers’ attempts to reverse the devastating actions of Thanos, the Mad Titan, in Avengers: Infinity War (2018). Endgame lived up to the expectations, smashing box office records and becoming the highest-grossing film in history, following a theatrical rerelease in September 2026. The film received acclaim for its visual effects, musical score, and resolution of several long-running character arcs.

Characters and plot

The cast of Avengers: Endgame includes:

• Robert Downey, Jr., as Iron Man/Tony Stark
• Chris Evans as Captain America/Steve Rogers
• Chris Hemsworth as Thor
• Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk/Bruce Banner
• Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff
• Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye/Clint Barton
• Paul Rudd as Ant-Man/Scott Lang
• Don Cheadle as War Machine/James Rhodes
• Brie Larson as Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers
• Karen Gillan as Nebula
• Bradley Cooper as the voice of Rocket Raccoon
• Tom Holland as Spider-Man/Peter Parker
• Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange/Stephen Strange
• Chadwick Boseman as Black Panther/T’Challa
• Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff
• Anthony Mackie as Falcon/Sam Wilson
• Sebastian Stan as Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes
• Chris Pratt as Star-Lord/Peter Quill
• Zoe Saldaña as Gamora
• Dave Bautista as Drax
• Pom Klementieff as Mantis
• Vin Diesel as the voice of Groot

The film begins in the days following the events of Avengers: Infinity War, in which Thanos wiped out half of all life in the universe to avert the threats to finite resources posed by uncontrolled overpopulation. A group of the surviving Avengers—Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Bruce Banner, Natasha Romanoff, James Rhodes, Nebula, Carol Danvers, and Rocket Raccoon—locate the Mad Titan on a distant planet and plan to use the all-powerful, reality-bending infinity stones to reverse his actions. They hunt down Thanos but learn that he destroyed the stones to ensure his actions could not be reversed. Thor kills him in a moment of vengeful fury.

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The film jumps forward five years. The heroes come to terms with their defeat in different ways—some more successfully than others. However, their hopes are renewed after Scott Lang is accidentally freed from the Quantum Realm by a rodent and shares what he has learned about the time-altering properties of the world he was trapped in. It dawns on some of the Avengers that the Quantum Realm may offer them a way to undo the destruction Thanos wrought. After much convincing, Stark develops a time machine to send the Avengers back in time and bring infinity stones to the present to revive the people who had been snapped out of existence.

The surviving heroes split into three teams:

• Stark, Rogers, Banner, and Lang go back to New York City in 2012 to retrieve the time, mind, and space stones; Stark and Rogers later travel farther back, to 1970, after a hiccup in their initial plan.
• Rocket and Thor travel to Asgard in 2013 to retrieve the reality stone.
• The remaining heroes go to space in 2014: Nebula and Rhodes retrieve the power stone from the planet Morag; Romanoff and Barton seek the soul stone on the planet Vormir.

However, the missions are not without pitfalls. Romanoff sacrifices herself to retrieve the soul stone, and Nebula involuntarily connects with her past self—a connection used by a past Thanos to decipher the Avengers’ plan. The time-traveling Nebula is captured by this Thanos, who sends her past self to the future as a decoy.

With the infinity stones in their possession, the Avengers create their own gauntlet to harness their power, and Banner uses it to restore the other half of the universe. At the same time the past Nebula opens a portal to transport the past Thanos and his army to the present to retrieve the stones and, this time, wipe out the universe entirely before rebuilding it from scratch as he sees fit. Doctor Strange brings the previously erased Avengers and their allies through magic portals to defend against the Mad Titan’s army—a final battle that concludes when Stark sacrifices himself and uses the stones as a last resort to wipe out Thanos and his forces.

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Following Stark’s funeral, Rogers is sent back to the past to return all the stones to prevent other timelines from being disrupted. However, he returns—apparently only seconds later in the present timeline—as an old man, evidently having stayed in the past for decades to live out his days in the company of the woman he loved.

Development and reception

Various story elements and plot points that come to a head in Endgame were set up in previous films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), which mixed in some fundamental ideas from the 1991 comic book series The Infinity Gauntlet and other storylines into original scripts for the movies. Several previous projects within the MCU are referenced and revisited from different vantage points in Avengers: Endgame through the conceit of time travel.

Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, who had previously directed two well-received Captain America films, were signed on to direct a planned two-part Avengers story in March 2015. The Russo brothers and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige later stressed that the two films were not two parts of a single story but tell two stories with shared narrative elements. To reflect this, the second movie, tentatively named Avengers: Infinity War Part 2, was retitled Avengers: Endgame. The new title was not revealed until months after the release of Infinity War. Principal photography for Endgame began in August 2017—less than a month after filming for Infinity War wrapped up—and ended in January 2018. As with many Marvel projects, precautions were taken to prevent plot leaks: The Russo brothers had said that no actor, except Downey and possibly Evans, had read the complete script. Like other superhero films, Endgame relied heavily on computer-generated visuals, for which it employed a total of 14 visual effects houses, including Industrial Light & Magic and Wētā FX.

Upon release Infinity War was a blockbuster success, grossing more than $2 billion and generating enormous anticipation for Endgame. With the stage set, Endgame delivered a largely satisfying payoff and became one of the most commercially successful movies of all time, raking in a total of $2.9 billion—including box office receipts from a September 2026 rerelease—on an estimated production budget of about $350 million–$400 million. When it was released in April 2019, the film set the record for highest-grossing opening day in a single market ($157 million; broken in 2026 by Spider-Man: Brand New Day) and became the first film to gross more than a billion dollars worldwide in its opening weekend. Endgame became the highest-grossing movie of all time in July 2019, until the rerelease of Avatar (2009) helped the James Cameron-directed film reclaim the top spot in March 2021. Endgame once again became the biggest money spinner in history following a theatrical rerelease in 2026.

Endgame also garnered much critical success. It received nominations for numerous awards, including an Academy Award nomination for visual effects and a Grammy nomination for best score soundtrack for visual media.