resurrecting my blog to rant about endgame? you bet
if you haven't seen the movie i hope you have '#endgame spoilers' blacklisted because i just realized that mobile doesn't have a read more option and i can't log in on desktop but I have Things To Say lmao. specifically about Steve.
so I'd like to start out by saying that I liked this movie a lot for many reasons and I will continue to love it after I get over this initial stage where I can't do fic that doesn't try to stick to canon and just bounce off to canon divergence and AU land because there's some great potential there tbh. BUT. right now I'm just disappointed because that's the least satisfying ending I could imagine for Steve and I believe that this throws almost his entire character arc out of the window. it's not even really about the fact that despite the constant emphasis on how Peggy was the love of his life I don't believe that, I could go with that even if, to me, it sounds like an exaggeration. yes. they had a connection that changed both of their lives but from what I gathered this is the type of love that's based on idealisation, and never had the time to move past that because of what happened. so while it could turn out that it really does work between them and they could stay together til death, i wouldn't bet my life on it. plus even if it's difficult for Steve to move on like he says, he did get some kind of closure with Peggy, even if their time was out of sync. she died, he buried and mourned her. that never fully goes away but I still think that it doesn't make sense emotionally for Steve from where he is to undo all that grieving just because he can, knowing that it can only be in a different timeline.
it's not even the fact that I think steve just bailing like that was ooc. or how baffled i am over the movie's efforts to keep Steve and Bucky as far from each other as possible at all times, and that apparently "the end of the line" was right there and then. it's not about shipping, I'm well aware that this is the MCU but even people who never gave two shits about these two noticed it. they're their own people, yes but you're trying to sell me that Steve has a closer bond with just about everyone and I'm not buying that lmao.
these are points I've already discussed with multiple people. but there's more.
what my biggest issue with selling this as his Happy Ending is this: yes, Steve was a "man out of time" in the 21st century, there was no one else like him, not even Bucky, because the shit he went through doesn't compare to Steve's experience at all. Steve had a hard time, he didn't adjust all that well, that's been voiced multiple times. but going back in time and finding Peggy doesn't fix that at all?? even if it's a branch reality where the future might play out differently than it did in the main timeline because who knows what happens with him around, he'll still be a man out of time there as well. he's lived several years in a world with ridiculous technology, advanced medicine, the internet?? space travel?? and then he goes back to a post WWII time with all that knowledge and experience noone else has and either radically changes that reality by introducing people to these concepts, or watches as people die from preventable diseases, etc. not to mention historical events and the fate of the people he knew in the main timeline + his own self, which works out how, exactly? there could be a bunch of ways to handle all this but the main two directions i can see is that he either lays low like... really low. or he interferes but which one is the satisfying ending here? I feel like he'd face almost the same problems just in a different universe. I've been thinking about this so much that I have a hard time believing that after having that dance with Peggy he actually stayed and what we see in present day is alternate timeline Steve who lived out his entire life with her in peace and then jumped back somehow. it just doesn't make sense to me but like, I have no clue where to go from here.
