#he throws away his life and growth as a person
To commemorate Endgame’s two-year anniversary, have another rant (you’re welcome). Even after two years, something that troubles me no end is that, according to Endgame, Bucky and Sam et al. are just supposed to… get over losing Steve. That they were expected to just move on from the loss of their friend (in Bucky’s case, his lifelong best friend and alleged soulmate) and just be fine after a little while. Yet at the same time, Endgame Steve, who, roughly eight decades on, is apparently still unable to get over Peggy - the woman he kissed one (1) time and only when he was maybe about to die, the woman he knows lived a long, happy life without him, who actually told him to move on, and who he literally buried - is expected to do no such thing.
Because, of course, heterosexual romance, even of the blandest kind, is far more valid and important than every other kind of romance, friendship, and (found) family combined.
Steve and Peggy never even went on a single date. Never canonically said ‘I love you’ or anything of the sort (certainly nothing like ‘I’m with you till the end of the line’). Fuck, Steve was even shown kissing Peggy’s niece not long after he buried Peggy. And yet we’re supposed to buy that in Endgame, Peggy is suddenly ‘the love of Steve’s life’, and losing her to old age devastated him more than the unexpected losses of so many of his friends - including Bucky, who he’d only just gotten back after years of looking for him, fighting for him, getting him back and losing him again- combined?
We’re supposed to blindly accept that it makes total sense for Steve to then, at the end of Endgame, leave everything and everyone he loves to go back to the past, to a time that would’ve been horrible for him for so many reasons, solelyto play happy families with Peggy? Even though Steve canonically told Tony in AOU that the guy who wanted stability and a family went into the ice 75 years ago and someone else ‘came out’? Even though Steve fought the whole world to get Bucky back and keep him safe, gave up his shield for him twice, and would’ve given up his life for him without hesitation if the alternative meant having to live without him again (even at a time when Peggy was still alive, mind you)?
The fact is, in the Cap movies we were shown that when it came down to it, nothing was more important to Steve than Bucky - certainly not Peggy. If anything came close, it was Steve’s relationships with the people he met in the new century, who he spent years living and fighting side by side with, and who, in Sam’s case, he canonically loved and admired enough to entrust him with his shield and legacy. What was between Steve and Peggy was canonically little more than a crush or mutual admiration/infatuation. If we’re supposed to take Endgame’s ending at face value, what Steve did was extremely out of character, deeply unhealthy and unfair, and most likely indicative of severe mental instability as a result of repeated and untreated trauma -not some romantic grand gesture to swoon over, and not a well-deserved happy ending. Apart from that, nothing we were shown in canon warranted Steve’s decision to leave everything and go back in time to be with Peggy in Endgame. And yet, that’s what the creators chose to go with, simply because it was the most widely palatable and therefore the most marketable option.
So yeah, Endgame’s ending is a farce and an insult to our intelligence at best, and a patronizing, cowardly, misogynistic, homophobic, capitalistic and plain awful mess at worst. And it is also one of the reasons why I simply do not vibe with canon any longer and I’m sticking to fanon forever more, thank you very much.
