#thank you avengers
But think about why people hated the Harry Potter epilogue.
It was an ending that was completely set in stone, a full stop, and sure, that can maybe work if the ending is an ideal one, but the definitions of ‘ideal’ vary from individual to individual, we all take different things out of this stories, and in HP’s case, it failed so hard because it was crafted to, hopefully, be “ideal” for a group of people that weren’t it’s main readerbase. Because most of the people really invested in those stories had a completely different “ideal” in mind.
But mostly, it failed because it left fans without any wiggle room. Because when you’ve spent years of your life invested in a story, falling in love with and caring for the characters, you don’t want it to end end. You want to see this specific journey of them coming to an end, yes, but you don’t want to say goodbye to them forever. You’ve spent way too much time with them to not want that “okay, what next?”
Endings like the Harry Potter epilogue take that “what if” away, take away that option to continue exploring, to continue playing in that sandbox. And sure, fandom will still fandom, and we’ll find a way because we’re powerful, but it’s much harder, much less satisfying, and it IS a goodbye, in a way.
But Endgame? Oh god.
Endgame did that so well, so so brilliantly.
It’s not easy to wrap up 10 years of character arcs and storylines. It’s not easy to satisfy people who may have known some of these characters for longer than they’ve known irl friends.
It’s not easy, because the “ideal” varies for each of us. It’s not easy because we’ve loved this universe for so long, and we simply don’t want it to end.
But Endgame is an ending that’s not an ending. It’s them opening the door to a universe of possibilities for us. It’s closure for the characters, because it needs to be, but for the most part, it’s closure that’s not a full stop, not a goodbye, just an “okay, it’s time for the next chapter, now.”
And they’re handing us the key to that next chapter. They’re giving us full liberties.
The openness is good. The openness is what doesn’t let this become stagnant, what keeps people creating and headcanoning and writing meta and exploring all the different possibilities and not letting the fandom die. They left things in the air that could’ve easily been clarified without needing any extra screentime or dialogue, just a slightly different line here and there, but they purposefully didn’t because that’d be limiting, that would’ve been taking options away from the fans.
The “what ifs” are what we thrive on, and they left the door open for all of them.
